Due to a scarcity of professionals to secure and manage the online world, cybersecurity professionals are in high demand. Read on to know more…
With the advent of digital transformation, the risk of cyberattacks has increased. The scarcity of professionals to secure and manage the internet world, on the other hand, has created a great demand for cybersecurity professionals.
According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) recent report, the world is short of 3 million cybersecurity professionals. WEF said “There is an undersupply of cyber professionals—a gap of more than 3 million worldwide who can provide cyber leadership, test and secure systems, and train people in digital hygiene,”
A persistent shortage of cybersecurity professionals could impede “economic growth”. According to the report, small businesses and other organisations may gain to some extent from new endeavours to “democratize” cybersecurity, such as providing free security risk management tools.
However, it said that “there are concerns that quantum computing could be powerful enough to break encryption keys, which poses a significant security risk because of the sensitivity and criticality of the financial, personal and other data protected by these keys. The emergence of the metaverse could also expand the attack surface for malicious actors by creating more entry points for malware and data breaches”
As a result, there is a greater demand for cybersecurity professionals. The PWC report stated “Security consulting services, which include planning of cyber security strategies, policy development, and building security architecture, are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.2% over 3 years to become a market worth $157 million by 2022,”
The PWC report further added “The security implementation services market in India is estimated to increase from $221 million in 2019 to $320 million by 2022, at a CAGR of 13.2%, given that drawing up effective cyber security strategies depend on successful security implementation,”
According to the Data Security Council of India, “the most advertised security job is ‘Analyst’. However, there is a significant demand for security operations, threat management, security management, identity and access management.”
Enterprises, on the other hand, are having difficulty finding qualified security professionals.
In 2021, Sophos found, “67% of companies are having difficulty staying up to date with their cybersecurity environment and in-house skills are an important consideration in helping organizations tackle this issue”.
It said “Unfortunately, 59% of businesses agree that their company’s lack of cybersecurity skills is challenging for their organization, a marginal 3% improvement from 2019’s 62%,”
Yask Sharma, CISO, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, said “Security is not just about mastering technology but the contextual application of it. The key is knowing the environment and applying appropriate controls. Enterprises look for professionals who have knowledge of both and often find it difficult to get the right mix in a professional,”
The issue is that no amount of outside cyber security experts can make cyber security better. Srinivas Kodali, Researcher, Free Software Movement of India, corroborated, “Cybersecurity is a culture that you have to develop within your organization. No external products or engineers can help with that as every engineer needs to be trained with this skill and most Indian engineers are hardly trained on this front and many do not understand the concept of privacy, though some may understand cyber security.”