Cyber Workforce Growth Slows As Tight Budgets Restrict Hiring

Uploaded on 2024-10-07 in NEWS-Cybersecurity News, JOBS-Careers, FREE TO VIEW

The cyber workforce gap has grown to a record high of 4.8 million, with a total of 10.2 million security professionals now required to keep organizations protected globally. Growth of the global cyber security workforce has slowed for the first time in six years, according to new research, while cyber threats show no signs of slowing.

ISC2’s Cybersecurity Workforce Study has found that the global workforce amounted to 5.5 million people, marking a 0.1% year on year increase, whereas the labor pool had grown by as much as 8.7% year on year in 2023.

This makes 2024 the first year in which the cyber workforce has slowed in the six years since ISC2 began estimating the workforce size in 2018.

The cyber security workforce gap reached a new high with approximately 4.8 million professionals needed to effectively secure organisations around the world, marking a 19% year on year increase.

ISC2 noted that for the first time, respondents cited a ‘lack of budget’ as the primary factor driving their staff shortages, overtaking the lack of qualified talent, which participants have pointed to in previous years.

For example, 37% of respondents reported they had their budgets cut in the last year, up 7% year on year.

Budget pressures also came in the form of layoffs to security teams, which affected a quarter of the participants in the survey. A further 38% of cyber professionals said they had experienced hiring freezes at their organisation, which represents a 6% increase from 2023.

Similarly, almost one third (32%) of participants reported seeing fewer promotions at their company during this period.

The slowdown comes at a time cyber attacks are coming thick and fast, with 74% of cyber practitioners and IT decision-makers stating that the 2024 threat landscape was the most challenging it has been in the last five years.

UK is the Largest Decline in Cyber Workers around the Globe

Notably, a number of nations saw their cyber workforce shrink over the course of 2024, according to ISC2 estimates, including Canada, Germany, Mexico, the UK, and the US.

The number of UK cyber professionals dropped from 367,300 to 349,360 over the year, falling by almost 5%, the largest contraction around the world.

Moving to the US, cyber workers numbered 1,338,507 in 2023, and shrunk by 3% to 1,298,804 in 2024, but despite the decrease the region still held the largest active cyber workforce in the world.

Cyber Teams have no Young Talent Coming

The workforce deficit was not the only gap on the front of security practitioner’s minds, ISC2 noted, adding that skills shortages continue to plague organisations around the world.

More than half (58%) of the participants indicated that they faced skills shortages at their organisation, while 64% said skills gaps present a greater challenge to securing businesses than staffing shortages.

ISC2 argued this demonstrates that a large swathe of organisations do not have a steady flow of cyber professionals who can “develop their foundational skillset in-house to bolster existing teams and instead are relying solely on hiring pre qualified talent.”

IT Pro | ISC2 | TCE | Yahoo | LinkedIn

Image: ThisIsEngineering

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