An increasing number of legal and contractual roles will emerge in the UK’s IT industry to deal with the complexities of cloud computing, according to James Lyne, director of technology strategy at Sophos.

Specifically, the roles will be created to “ensure that third parties behave correctly and responsibly in the cloud”, said Lyne.

Lyne was speaking at a CW Jobs breakfast briefing in London last week (13 July). Lyne told an audience of IT industry recruiters and recruitment agencies of the types of candidates who were currently sought after in the internet security industry to combat the rapidly expanding ‘illicit economy’ of malicious code.

Recent increases in the severity of internet security regulations and the accelerating increase in cloud services have accentuated the need for legal expertise within the sector.

Lyne says: “It is unrealistic to expect to breed lawyers with extreme technical knowledge, but what I do advocate and expect to see, and do see already in some companies, is a degree of cross-pollination, the formation of multidisciplinary teams with the technical team working with the legal team, with business risk owners, with the management team and so on.”

Microsoft has predicted that 780,000 IT jobs will be created in the UK in the next four years. Lyne predicts a 10 times increase in the number of different roles centred around technology in the next few years, from physical and social security to research to risk management, but the government body e-Skills has reported a 50% decline in young UK residents entering IT careers in the last years.

Spreading awareness of the roles available is therefore key, and “cyber security should be integrated into the British school curriculum alongside English, Maths and Science”, says Lyne who also highlighted the “drastic reduction” in GCSE and A-Level IT students in the last few years. Above all, “aptitude, approach and ability to think” are crucial, he adds.