Future-proofing the workforce is a challenge many states are facing, and the solution will likely be a multifaceted one that includes upskilling employees, embracing nontraditional hiring strategies, diversifying, and collaborating with educational institutions.
In Arizona, methods to combat cybersecurity talent challenges include Talent Ready AZ Workforce Cabinet, ReadyTechGo and the Regional Security Operations Center (RSOC).
According to Carlos Contreras, director of the state’s Office of Economic Opportunity, the state economy is on an upturn. He cited a 2024 report from his agency, which found Arizona had the lowest unemployment rate since the 1970s, and available jobs are growing.
“We are forecasting about 53,000 jobs in the next 10 years for IT and cyber,” Contreras said, noting a growth rate of about 7.6 percent. “It’s one of the fastest growing areas for the labor market.”
While the jobs are readily available, the challenge for the state to attract workers is salary; staying competitive with private-sector organizations’ salary rates is a common challenge for the public sector.
Arizona Department of Homeland Security Deputy (DOHS) Director Ryan Murray said that this is the state’s greatest challenge as an employer, especially with so many jobs to fill. Using traditional methods of hiring would make this task impossible, he explained; that is why the state is taking a different approach.
For example, the private sector is often unable or unwilling to take entry-level talent directly from schools, but Murray said he is “more than happy … to be the training ground for these cyber professionals” within DOHS.
“I would absolutely rather have an entry-level, recent graduate student — or even a current student — paying attention to security incidents happening and helping us to respond to them versus having no eyes and hands doing anything for our local governments and our state agencies.”
The Talent Ready AZ Workforce Cabinet was established by the governor in a September executive order to address the need for job training opportunities in high-demand industries, including but not limited to IT and cyber. As Murray said, there is often a through line across sectors for these demand areas. For example, health care, manufacturing and government will all need cyber professionals.
“So, if we can find cyber professionals and grow them within Arizona, we can also place them within these other needed critical positions to help continue to drive all the economic development efforts that are happening across the other sectors,” he said.
Part of this initiative is data and information sharing between agencies, Contreras explained, enabling state agencies to better evaluate workforce programs. The state can then provide information on program completion rates and graduate salaries to local workforce boards to help them better allocate resources for job seekers based on industry demand.
“A lot of the complexity around workforce development is really around the lack of information that sometimes exists for folks that are making these types of decisions,” Contreras said.
Another workforce-focused initiative is ReadyTechGo, launched in July. Through it, the state is working with a network of Arizona colleges to train students for in-demand careers in manufacturing.
“ReadyTechGo is really about that collaboration, and then getting our community colleges in three different counties to collaborate on degrees [and] definitions so that employers have a wider base to draw talent from,” Contreras said. Community colleges, he added, are a major source of talent, helping fill gaps especially in rural unemployment. Establishing this pipeline will help organizations attract and hire this demographic.
Another unique approach the state is taking to workforce development is via its Regional Security Operations Center, the first of which Murray said is slated to launch early this year. The center will enable the state to provide enhanced cybersecurity support to its local governments.
Arizona has provided cybersecurity tools to local governments for at least five years, Murray explained, enabling local governments to access security services he said they would not otherwise be able to afford, through the Statewide Cyber Readiness Program. Because localities are using the same tools state agencies are using, it also allows information sharing between government organizations, to implement best practices or replicate innovative use cases.
Notably, the program is currently offered at no cost to local governments; the state pays for it. Murray said he hopes this model will continue to lift local governments and communities out of “cyber poverty,” which is essentially an organization’s limited capacity to meet cyber objectives.
“It behooves us all — because of the interconnected nature of government and business and everything being digitized — for us to all make sure we’re all protecting each other,” he said.
Local governments, however, have limited staff to effectively monitor these tools and respond to cybersecurity alerts. By leveraging the existing relationships community colleges have with their communities in the RSOC model, the state can put students to work with local governments in a paid internship program. These interns report to DOHS as its employees, where security and vetting practices are already in place. This model also gives students hands-on experience that employers are looking for.
This initiative is slated to start with Pima Community College; others are slated to go live later this year. Murray’s goal, he said, is to have all 10 state community college districts involved eventually.
Contreras emphasized the vital role of public-private partnerships in providing the skills and pipelines needed to address future challenges as technology’s role in the workforce broadens.
“And ideally, this provides an opportunity for these students to continue to live where they already are to support their own communities,” Murray said, of participants’ careers after completing the program, whether those are in government, the private sector or entrepreneurship. “The sky is the limit; you can essentially take that experience and go anywhere.”