A new Visa apprenticeship program aims to grow cybersecurity talent

Amid increasingly dangerous cybersecurity threats, the best talent in the industry needs to be trained to respond. Visa is doing just that with a new upskilling program open to all workers, whether they work for the organization or not.  

In March 2023 alone, 41.9 million data records were compromised by cyberattacks across the world, a 951% increase over two years, according to IT Governance, a global provider of cyber risk and privacy management solutions. And while the breaches increased the demand for cybersecurity talent across all industries and grew the workforce by 10% in 2022, the demand is still outpacing supply, according to data from computer security service Esentire, with 3.5 million roles still left unfilled in 2023.

The Visa Payments Learning Program was developed in response to the White House National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan, which called on businesses to broaden pathways for individuals to get into cybersecurity. The program has three main avenues: An apprenticeship program, a military talent program and individual cybersecurity courses and certifications offered through Visa University. The program will provide new pathways, especially for those with non traditional education backgrounds. 

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"Talent across the board are choosing to enter the workforce without a four-year degree or by changing career paths," says Jeremy Broome, SVP of Global Talent at Visa. "With these offerings, we are creating multiple pathways for talent seeking to break into the cybersecurity field."  

For the payments industry, the talent shortage could lead to dire cybersecurity consequences, such as increased vulnerability, slower response time, increased workload and burnout, difficulty in keeping up with trends and potential financial loss, according to Broome. Visa saw an opportunity to strengthen their own cybersecurity teams while also creating a solution the entire payments sector could benefit from. 

"We assessed our internal capabilities and created ways to educate the greater payments industry by providing training and certification programs that will deliver a solid foundation for talent,"  he says. "It is imperative that we change our views on what the standard cyber professional's credentials look like." 

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The apprenticeship program consists of 16 weeks of specialist training, followed by a one-year apprenticeship, featuring on-the-job training of technical and business skills. The military track is similar, except it recruits and hires military veterans, reservists and military spouses into a program that reskills or builds on their existing experiences. Both avenues are aimed at applicants eventually looking for jobs at Visa. 

The third option, courses and certifications offered through Visa University, do not guarantee employment at Visa, but were created instead to offer educational resources to anyone within the payments industry looking to boost their credentials.

"This program is a win-win solution for Visa and the payments industry," Broome says. "It's important for organizations to invest in training and development and work towards increasing diversity within the industry."