Good day for community colleges

Microsoft on Thursday announced a new campaign to invest millions of dollars and resources in community colleges in an effort to address the massive shortage of American workers to fill cybersecurity positions.

Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith detailed the campaign in a blog post published Thursday, with the effort aimed at recruiting 250,000 individuals to join the cybersecurity field by 2025 primarily through bolstering support for community colleges.

“As we look to the future, we need to recognize as a nation that we face a cybersecurity skills crisis in the country,” Smith told reporters at a virtual event to announce the campaign Thursday. “We cannot protect the country unless we fill the open cybersecurity jobs that exist today, and the single best way we can do that is to mobilize the nation’s community colleges.”