Analyzing Cybersecurity Job Market Needs in Morocco by Mining Job Ads

• Main Authors: Rahhal, Ibrahim, Makdoun, Ibtissam, Mezzour, Ghita, Khaouja, Imane, Carley, Kathleen, Kassou, Ismail
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer languages; Computer security; Contracts; Cybersecurity; Data collection; Education; Industries; Job market analysis; Skills; Text mining
• ISSN: 2165-9567
• DOI: 10.1109/EDUCON.2019.8725033

Cybersecurity jobs are becoming more and more in demand for companies and governmental organizations, especially with the increasing number of cyber-threats in the world. In order to keep up with these changes, a study for the cybersecurity job market needs is required in order to help universities adapt their curricula and train more skilled graduates. However, most of prior work focuses on IT jobs and overlooks the cybersecurity field which makes the analysis of the needs of this field ambiguous. In this paper, we collect job ads from 9 Moroccan job portals from February 2017 to June 2018. After removing duplicates, we result in 409 job ads. Then, we split the data into two categories that are cybersecurity jobs and IT jobs that require cybersecurity. We use text analysis techniques to extract skills and requirements listed in these ads. More specifically, we extract the education level, programming languages, natural languages, years of experience, certifications and types of contract listed in these ads. Our paper finds that skills that are highly requested, such as risk analysis methods and certificates are not emphasized in cybersecurity-specific curriculum, while skills that are less in demand, such as a range of programming languages, are taught more regularly in universities. Additionally, more jobs require some understanding of English than of French, which was surprising given prevalence of French in Morocco. Our results can be used to reshape universities training in order to meet the demand of the job market.