B4| Tuesday, December 1, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
BYJAMESRUNDLE
Cybersecurity Jobs Go Unfilled
Mismatch between
entry-level skills and
what employers seek,
exacerbates problem
The RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco in February.
WU XIAOLING/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech CORPORATE WATCH
JACOBS ENGINEERING
Deal Is Set to Buy
PA Consulting Stake
Jacobs Engineering Group
Inc. agreed to buy a 65% stake
inPA Consulting, a consulting
firm that specializes in sectors
such as energy, financial services
and manufacturing.
The deal values PA at £1.83
billion, or roughly $2.4 billion.
The remaining 35% of PA will be
owned by its employees, follow-
ing the exit of majority stake-
holder, the Carlyle Group.
PA’s past work includes con-
tributions to the Virgin Hyper-
loop transportation system and
work on cell- and gene-therapy
manufacturing with Ori Biotech.
—Matt Grossman
JETBLUE AIRWAYS
Revenue Decline of
70% Is Forecast
JetBlue AirwaysCorp.saidit
now expects fourth-quarter rev-
enue to be 70% lower than the
year-earlier period, a more pessi-
mistic forecast than the 65%
drop the New York-based airline
had previously expected.
Fourth-quarter capacity will
be lower by 45% to 50%, JetBlue
said, compared with its previous
projection of a 45% drop. Book-
ing trends remain volatile be-
cause of the pandemic, JetBlue
said.
Average daily cash burn in
the quarter will likely be $6 mil-
lion to $8 million, compared with
the airline’s previous forecast for
daily cash burn of $4 million to
$6 million.
—Matt Grossman
PPG INDUSTRIES
Coatings Maker
Will Be Acquired
PPG IndustriesInc. said it
will acquireEnnis-Flint, a manu-
facturer of coatings and pave-
ment-marking products, in a deal
valued at $1.15 billion.
The addition of Ennis-Flint
will expand Pittsburgh-based
PPG’s mobility-technologies busi-
ness, said Michael McGarry,
PPG’s chairman and chief execu-
tive.
Ennis-Flint, based in Greens-
boro, N.C., creates products such
as traffic paint and raised pave-
ment markers, and has about
1,000 employees.
Full-year revenue for the pri-
vately held company is expected
to be about $600 million, PPG
said.
—Matt Grossman
COLLECTORS UNIVERSE
Investor Group to
Take Firm Private
Collectors UniverseInc. said
it agreed to be taken private by
an investor group for $75.25 a
share, or about $700 million, in
cash.
The deal represents a roughly
3.7% premium to Friday’s closing
price of $72.55 for the Santa
Ana, Calif., provider of authenti-
cation and grading services for
collectibles.
Collectors Universe said the
investor group is led by entre-
preneur and sports-card collector
Nat Turner, D1 Capital Partners
L.P. and Cohen Private Ventures
LLC.
—Colin Kellaher
The carrier said booking trends are volatile due to the pandemic.
DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Layers of corporate bureau-
cracy often add unreasonable
requirements to what should
be simple job postings, said
Neal Dennis, a threat intelli-
gence specialist at security
firm Cyware Labs Inc.
“There’s a misunderstanding, I
think, out the door of what the
[requirements] really should
be for junior, midlevel and se-
nior roles, and what those ex-
pectations are,” he said.
tions awarding such continuing
education certificates find it
puzzling they are a requirement
in entry-level job postings.
“You need five years of ex-
perience to have a CISSP,” said
Clar Rosso, chief executive of
ISC2, which issues the certifi-
cation. “Possibly the human-re-
sources recruiter doesn’t have
experience in the area and
they’re not able to say, wait,
that doesn’t even make sense.”
Cyber analyst roles adver-
tised in November at real-es-
tate firms, banks, consultan-
cies and other companies
across the U.S. routinely asked
for at least two to four years
of experience and knowledge
of advanced disciplines.
Professional bona fides, such
as the Certified Information Se-
curity Systems Professional cer-
tification, can be an advantage
for job seekers, but organiza-
Companies need millions
more cybersecurity profes-
sionals to fill roles around the
world, but researchers say
outlandish job requirements
are the problem, rather than a
lack of workers.
Around 3.1 million profes-
sionals are needed to bridge
the cybersecurity talent gap, a
trade association for cyberse-
curity professionals estimated
in a November report. The In-
ternational Information Sys-
tem Security Certification Con-
sortium, known as ISC2, said
world-wide employment in the
field would need to grow 89%
to meet security requirements.
However, excessive require-
ments for years of experience
and professional certifications
plus inflated expectations for
junior roles aren’t uncommon,
said Chase Cunningham, princi-
pal analyst at research firm
Forrester Inc. He said that re-
sults in the perpetual problem
of such positions going unfilled
because companies often target
overqualified candidates who
can command greater salaries
than these jobs tend to offer.
maintaining their own version
of those machines.
Amazon Web Services, as
the online retailer’s cloud
business is called, said it is in-
troducing Mac Mini computers
into its data centers so cus-
tomers can develop, test and
run their software remotely.
For Apple, helping Amazon
integrate its computers into
AWS could aid developers who
are at the heart of a software
and services strategy that is
an increasingly important
sales driver for the Cupertino,
Calif., company.
Initially, Amazon is install-
ing a version of the Mac Mini
that has been available for
some time, but David Brown,
an AWS vice president, said
the company intends to update
its hardware as Apple launches
new equipment. In November,
Apple unveiled a Mac Mini
powered by a chip it designed,
called the M1, supplanting In-
tel Corp. chips. Mr. Brown said
Amazon aimed to install M1-
based Macs in its cloud opera-
tions early next year.
“We’re going to support the
Mac operating system and Mac
machines—whichever ones
customers want access to,” he
said.
Many developers of soft-
ware running on non-Apple
hardware have been using
cloud services for years. But to
develop and test software for
Apple devices, they typically
had to buy and maintain their
own Macs, given the tight cou-
pling between Apple’s hard-
ware and software and the
lack of Mac hardware at major
cloud vendors. With its intro-
duction of Macs, Amazon is
betting that companies devel-
oping software such as iPhone
and iPad apps will be able to
improve their offerings more
quickly while avoiding the has-
sle of managing and scaling up
hardware they own.
Amazon.comInc. andAp-
pleInc. are joining forces to
support companies developing
apps and other software for
the smartphone maker’s de-
vices.
Apple developers histori-
cally had to buy the company’s
computers to make and fully
test apps for its devices. But
under the agreement the com-
panies disclosed Monday, Am-
azon is introducing Apple
computers and making them
available through its cloud-
computing business, enabling
developers to forgo buying and
BYASAFITCH
Amazon Provides Macs to Apple Developers
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