Wanted: 4 Million Cybersecurity Experts

Cyberattack disruptions cost the global digital economy over $10.5 trillion a year. A number that is set to rise with the acceleration of cybercrime. While this is terrible, it is compounded by businesses facing a huge cybersecurity talent shortage. It turns out there are seats that need to be filled. Roles requiring cybersecurity skills.

According to the findings from a recent Kaspersky Cybersecurity Weekend, 41 per cent of companies worldwide are facing a shortfall of qualified cybersecurity professionals. This problem is even more sensitive for the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa (META) region, with 43 per cent of companies recorded as understaffed. Most understaffing can be found among malware analysts and information security researchers.

According to the World Economic Forum and ISC2 – the world’s leading member organisation for cybersecurity professionals – the world urgently needs 4 million cybersecurity experts.

As the frequency and complexity of attacks increase, and the demand for InfoSec professionals in business grows, the number of practitioners meeting the company’s requirements for skills and level of expertise is declining. Studies carried out by cybersecurity companies and international organisations have already highlighted the lack of InfoSec professionals. Research conducted by (ISC)2 cybersecurity workforce study revealed that the workforce gap was almost 4 million InfoSec workers in 2022.

The survey indicates “The skills shortage, the lack of InfoSec professionals, and the increased number of cyberthreats create a vicious circle. This problem has existed for many years: however, many cyber professionals state the skills gap has not narrowed. It has gotten even worse.”

Looking at cybersecurity needs across industries, the government sector reported the highest demand for cybersecurity practitioners and admitted that nearly half (46 per cent) of the InfoSec roles it required remain unfilled. The telecom and media sectors are understaffed by 39 per cent followed by retail & wholesale and healthcare with 37 per cent of its roles remaining vacant.

“To reduce the shortage of qualified InfoSec professionals, companies offer high salaries, better working conditions and bonus packages, while also investing in up-to-date training with the latest knowledge,” observed Vladimir Dashchenko, Security Evangelist, ICS CERT, Kaspersky. “However, the research results show that these measures are not always enough. The growth rate of the domestic IT market in some developing regions is changing so rapidly, that the labour market cannot manage to educate and train the appropriate specialists with the necessary skills and expertise in such tight deadlines, he added.

To minimise the negative consequences of global cybersecurity staff shortfall, experts recommend the following:

• Adopt managed security services to get additional expertise without additional hiring. It helps to protect against cyberattacks and investigate incidents even if a company lacks security workers.
• Invest in additional cybersecurity courses for your staff to keep them up to date with the latest knowledge. InfoSec professionals can advance their hard skills and defend their companies against attacks.
• Use interactive simulators to test your expertise and assess the way you think in critical situations. Gamification allows for observation in the way the company’s IT department deploys, investigates and responds to an attack and makes vital decisions with the game’s main character.
• Use centralised and automated solutions to reduce the burden on the IT security team and minimise the possibility of making mistakes. By aggregating and correlating data from multiple sources in one place and using technologies of machine learning, these solutions provide effective threat detection and fast automated response.

The research The Portrait Of Modern Information Security Professional was conducted with 1,012 InfoSec professionals in 29 countries from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the META region and North and Latin America. It evaluated the current state of the labour market and analysed the exact reasons for the cybersecurity skills shortage.

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