Building Cyber Defenders: Russ Munisteri’s Call to Arms on Training

Every report on the cybersecurity talent shortage ends the same way: there are not enough trained people. Saying so does not fill a single seat. What does is training that turns newcomers and career changers into people who can work a ticket queue or harden a server on their first week.

Russ Munisteri, a program chair and lead instructor at MyComputerCareer, has spent years making that case. Here is his argument, how his school approaches it and what makes job training credible.

Education as the first line of defense

Munisteri’s view is that knowledge comes before tools. People who understand how attacks work make fewer mistakes, and they protect their employers as well as themselves. Training, in that view, is a security control in its own right, one that cuts risk before any firewall rule is written.

How MyComputerCareer builds its courses

MyComputerCareer, a Raleigh, North Carolina, IT training school founded in 2007, builds its programs around industry certifications employers already ask for. Classes lean on hands-on labs instead of lectures. Students configure systems, break them and fix them. The goal is graduates who have already done some of the work they will be hired to do.

The shortage training is meant to fill

Security teams still struggle to hire. Workforce studies keep finding far more open roles than qualified candidates. Schools like MyComputerCareer are one route into the field for people without a computer science degree, and Munisteri argues that widening those routes is how the industry gets more people into security careers. More entry points mean a steadier supply of qualified staff.

Courses shaped by employers

The school says its programs are revised based on feedback from practitioners, so the content tracks the tools and certifications employers use now. Those ties to working professionals also give students mentors and contacts, which can matter as much as the certificate in landing a first job.

Room for career changers

The programs are designed for students with very different starting points. Some have never worked in IT. Others are mid-career and want to move into security. Munisteri’s aim is to make the field less intimidating for both groups. A team built from varied backgrounds also tends to catch problems a more uniform one would miss.

What employers can take from it

Munisteri’s argument comes down to this: the talent gap closes one trained person at a time, and the training has to match the job. For employers, that means looking past degrees to hands-on skills and certifications, and backing programs that bring career changers into the field. Waiting for the market to produce experienced hires has not worked so far.

Also worth reading: Readers thinking about training priorities can pair this with our guide to the best cybersecurity certifications in 2026 to decide which credentials are still worth serious investment.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.