IN THE NEWS | Oceanit IT Director David Takeyama on HPR

Oceanit’s Head of IT,  David Takeyama, spoke with Hawaii Public Radio’s Casey Harlow about the current shortage of IT and cybersecurity professionals in Hawaii. The conversation explored how Oceanit’s — and the broader Hawai’i business sector’s — demand for technical talent far outweighs the current pool of workers.

“Skills that we’re looking for are things like networking system administration. Things like configuring firewalls or routers,” Takeyama said. “And then there’s cyber analytics. So this could be log management and knowledge of how to analyze an incident. So it’s important to know a real threat versus not a real threat.”

Oceanit has been searching for the right fit for over a year. A recent study by SMS Hawaiʻi found that in 2020 there were nearly 13,000 job openings in the Hawaii tech sector — in IT, cybersecurity, networking, etc. — but only 3,800 people hired.  As a result, the Chamber of Commerce Hawaiʻi, in partnership with The University of Hawai’i, announced a new program called “Leap-Start”. The new effort will connect employers and students with IT work opportunities in the hopes that Hawai’i can establish a competitive pipeline and tech workforce.

Read the full article and listen to HPR’s broadcast segment here.