Cybersecurity professionals continue to be a hot commodity, with demand for them straining talent availability, according to cybersecurity workforce analytics platform CyberSeek.
Developed in partnership with National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education at NIST, Lightcast and CompTIA, CyberSeek in a new study says there were nearly 770,000 openings for cybersecurity jobs for the 12-month period ending in September 2022. Employer demand for these jobs is growing 2.4 times faster than the overall rate across the U.S. economy.
In fact, nine of the 10 top months for cybersecurity job postings in the past 10 years have occurred in 2022, CyberSeek found.
“The data should compel us to double-down on efforts to raise awareness of cybersecurity career opportunities to youth and adults, especially during Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week which is an international campaign to inspire individuals to explore the variety of types of cybersecurity-related roles that are needed in both the public and private sectors,” said Rodney Petersen, Director of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).
Despite a slight pullback in hiring activity in the most recent months from the record volumes earlier this year, cybersecurity job postings for Q3 2022 tracked 30% higher than the same period in 2021 and 68% higher than 2020, the data shows.
There are about 65 cybersecurity workers in the labor market for every100 job postings, a supply-demand ratio that has largely held steady over the last 12 months.
Perhaps exacerbating the cybersecurity jobs crisis, requirements for job postings have increased dramatically over the last 12 months, with the industry expanding into specialized fields such as penetration testing and threat analysis.
There is a similar expansion of cybersecurity skills requirements in adjacent positions such as auditor (+336%), software developer (+87%), cloud architect (+83%) and technical support engineer (+48%), according to CyberSeek.
“The CyberSeek data reaffirms the critical importance of feeder roles and thinking more creatively about on-ramps and career pathways,” says Ron Culler, vice president cyber learning officer, CompTIA. “It is clear from the CyberSeek data that cybersecurity’s importance and impact reaches all levels of the tech workforce. We see this trend continuing and are committed to ensuring that cybersecurity professionals are prepared for the current and future challenges this will bring.”
“Demand for cybersecurity talent has been accelerating for years, and employers are showing no signs of taking their foot off the gas,” says Will Markow, vice president of applied research at Lightcast. “That’s why it is more important than ever to build robust talent pipelines to ensure a safer digital world. We can’t accept leaving holes in our cybersecurity defenses simply because we don’t have enough trained workers to plug them.”
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