According to the (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce study, careers in cybersecurity are becoming increasingly popular, but labor shortages persist due to an uneven relationship between client and cybersecurity workforce ratio.
This is despite the fact that there are 4.7 million people working in cybersecurity worldwide, and the labor market gap is still estimated at around 3.4 million and is unlikely to close in the coming years. However, there is hope that the margin will narrow.
This year, the (ISC)2 reported speaking with a record 11,779 cybersecurity experts worldwide, and its report provided insights into the challenges and opportunities facing cybersecurity professionals, including global cybersecurity skills shortages, as well as new concerns about hiring, corporate culture, job satisfaction, career paths, professional development, and the future of cybersecurity work.
“(ISC)2’s cybersecurity workforce gap analysis revealed that despite adding more than 464,000 workers in the past year, the cybersecurity workforce gap has grown more than twice as much as the workforce with a 26.2% year-over-year increase, making it a profession in dire need of more people, “the report said.
Moreover, according to the report, nearly 70% of cybersecurity workers believe that their organization does not have enough cybersecurity personnel to be effective, with shortages particularly acute in the aerospace, government, education, insurance, and transportation industries.
It goes on to say that a cybersecurity workforce gap jeopardizes the most basic functions of the profession, such as risk assessment, oversight, and critical patching of systems. More than half of employees in understaffed organizations believe that their organization is at moderate or extreme risk of cyberattack.
In addition, the study found that employees are feeling the workforce gap more than ever before. Compared to last year, significantly more cybersecurity experts reported that their organization had problems such as insufficient time to evaluate and monitor processes, slow patching of critical systems, and insufficient time and resources for training due to staff shortages.
The sources for this piece include an article in CPOMagazine.