As the US has settled into about 5% unemployment, cyber security is at an astonishing 0%. There are currently 2 job openings for every one candidate. This is great for cyber security professionals but as companies face more complex cyber attacks its becoming harder to fill the roles they need to protect their organizations.
A non-profit information security advocacy group, ISACA “predicts there will be a global shortage of two million cyber security professionals by 2019. Every year in the U.S., 40,000 jobs for information security analysts go unfilled, and employers are struggling to fill 200,000 other cyber-security related roles, according to cyber security data tool CyberSeek. And for every ten cyber security job ads that appear on careers site Indeed, only seven people even click on one of the ads, let alone apply.” Forbes, March 16th 2017.
These jobs are in demand for a very good reason. IBM estimates that in 2016, the average cost of a security breach was $4 million. With such a high demand and not enough candidates to fill the roles, salaries have been quickly rising. From 2015 to 2016, security managers’ compensation has risen 6.4%. The highest rise from a Computerworld salary survey. As a whole security positions command a 6.5% premium over other information technology professionals.
