More than 40% of companies in the world are facing a shortage of high-quality cybersecurity experts to fight hackers.
In the context of a shortage of information security (InfoSec) experts, Kaspersky conducted a survey on “Portrait of modern information security professionals” to clarify the causes leading to this situation.
Participating in the survey were more than 1,000 InfoSec professionals from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, North America and Latin America. The results show that the gap in security human resources in the labor market is currently nearly 4 million people.
According to Kaspersky, 41% of companies describe their cybersecurity teams as being seriously understaffed. This situation occurs most often in Russia, Latin American countries and the Asia-Pacific region.
Statistical chart of the global shortage of security experts by region.
The positions with the biggest shortage of human resources are information security researchers and malware analysts. More than 40% of companies believe that these are the most difficult positions to recruit. Growing demand for these positions is seen in Europe, Russia and Latin America.
The report also noted a shortage of human resources to manage cybersecurity operations centers (SOC). In particular, human resources in the two positions of information security and network security assessment are assessed at a low level. According to the survey, the position with the least number of vacancies but still with high recruitment demand is threat reconnaissance (32%).
When looking at needs by industry, the report shows that the government sector currently lacks nearly half (46%) of the security workforce to combat the activities of hacker gangs and cybercriminals.
The telecommunications industry also witnessed a shortage of security experts at 39%, followed by the retail, wholesale and healthcare industries with 37% of vacant positions. The industries with the fewest InfoSec vacancies are IT (31%) and financial services (27%).
Statistical chart of the global shortage of security professionals based on job position.
Mr. Vladimir Dashchenko, responsible for security activities at Kaspersky ICS CERT commented: “To reduce the shortage of highly specialized InfoSec specialists, companies should introduce salaries, working conditions better, and invest in training and updating new knowledge.”
However, survey results show that these measures are not always suitable for the needs and conditions of businesses.
Due to dramatic changes in the IT market in some developing countries, the labor market cannot offer the necessary skills and expertise training programs in a short period of time. In contrast, a significant shortage of InfoSec professionals is not occurring in regions with developed economies and mature businesses.
