The cybersecurity jobs market is white hot and is showing no signs of letting up. How hot is the cybersecurity jobs market? Most recently, enterprise technology publication Computerworld, in its 2016 IT Salary Survey, reported that Information Security Manager and Information Security Specialist are both among the top five in-demand jobs in IT.
Frost and Sullivan recently conducted the 2015 (ISC)2 Global Information Security Workforce Study which came to the unsettling conclusion: Within five years there will be a 1.5 million short fall in the cybersecurity workforce. If you are working in cybersecurity today and think you are busy and short-staffed: Buckle up because chances are the ride is going to get a lot rougher in the years ahead.
In my discussions with CSOs and CISOs in the past few years, down to a person, they cited the difficulty they had finding the security skills they needed. Another challenge is, increasingly, cybersecurity professionals require both the right technical and communication aptitude. Many in the field today have technical skills, but lack the ability to speak to all levels of business management in an effective way.
“I think that skillsets that are a combination of a broad technical foundation with some depth combined with strong business leadership and communications skills will be a must for CISOs to succeed. You can often find one or the other today. Finding both skillsets in a single person is the challenge,” Jay Leek, CISO at The Blackstone Group, told me for my story Five CISO skills critical to your success in the next five years.
That’s why it was no surprise to me to read in Burning Glass Technologies’ Cybersecurity Jobs, 2015 research that cybersecurity openings are expanding at a rate three times those of other IT positions, that cybersecurity workers earn 9% more than other IT employees, and that enterprises on average take much more time trying to fill cybersecurity positions.
According to Burning Glass there were nearly 50,000 postings for workers with a CISSP certification in 2014 – that figure represents 75% of all CISSP certification holders. Security professionals are not currently in want for work.
Some of the other trends Burning Glass Technologies’ found:
As we wrote in Five keys to hire and cultivate the right cybersecurity talent the lack of cybersecurity talent relative to enterprise demand is strangling many enterprises’ ability to secure their organizations. Have a look at that blog for some short and long term ways enterprises can better get the security talent they need.
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George V. Hulme is an internationally recognized information security and business technology writer. For more than 20 years Hulme has written about business, technology, and IT security topics. From March 2000 through March 2005, as senior editor at InformationWeek magazine, he covered the IT security and homeland security beats. His work has appeared in CSOOnline, ComputerWorld, Network Computing, Government Computer News, Network World, San Francisco Examiner, TechWeb, VARBusiness, and dozens of other technology publications.
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