Growing concern over cybercrime among decision makers at major firms is boosting the demand for security experts, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.
Over the past year alone, there has been a fourfold increase in executives putting out requests for such experts, with more and more businesses beginning to understand that this is a threat they can no longer ignore.
High-profile data breaches have been an influential factor in raising awareness of cybercrime, as well as driving home how devastating such an attack can be.
No enterprise, for example, wants to be victim to the type of cybercrime experienced by the likes of Ashley Madison and TalkTalk. The fallout, financially and otherwise (i.e. brand damage) can take years to fix. In some instances, it can be hard to fully recover at all.
It’s no surprise to learn that to mitigate such possibilities from materializing, big organizations are willing to pay security professionals more than £10,000 a day.
“There are millions of cyberattacks every day with a total cost to the global economy of up to $575 billion a year,” explained Mark Cahill, managing director of Manpower in the UK.
“Companies are having to invest heavily to protect themselves ... their focus moving to responding to attacks rather than just prevention.”
“Companies are having to invest heavily to protect themselves and they now believe that cyber breaches are inevitable, with their focus moving to responding to attacks rather than just prevention.”
One of the reasons why certain cyber experts and businesses are able to charge so much is down to supply and demand – the latter is plentiful, the former not so much.
As (ISC)2, the security certification and industry body, revealed earlier this year, the security industry is in desperate need of new recruits.
If things continue as they stand, then by 2020, there will be a shortfall of some 1.5 million cybersecurity experts.
