Cybersecurity Ventures just released a report estimating that by 2021, there will be 3.5 million available cybersecurity jobs that will remain unfilled, three times as many as those that were unfilled in 2016, highlighting a major and growing labor crisis in the global cybersecurity industry.
In the U.S. specifically:
- The cybersecurity industry employs approximately 780,000 people
- According to CyberSeek, there are roughly 350,000 current industry openings.
- Given the rate of increasing job openings, the U.S. alone is expected to have more than 500,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in 2021.
In India alone, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that there will be demand for 1 million cybersecurity professionals by 2020.
The Reason for the Rise
Online crime is a rapidly-growing threat to companies. In 2016 in the U.S. alone, more than half of companies have experienced some time of cybercrime, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Economic Crime Survey.
By 2021, cybercrime is estimated to cost the global economy $6 trillion, which includes:
- Damage and destruction of data
- Stolen money
- Lost productivity
- Theft of intellectual property
- Identity theft (theft of personal and financial data)
- Embezzlement
- Business disruption
- Fraud
- Investigation resources
- Restoration of hacked systems
- Damaged reputations
And of course, the increased demand for cyber professionals in an industry that’s already starving for candidates.
According to the 2017 cybersecurity jobs report, “every IT position is also a cybersecurity position now. Every IT worker, every technology worker, needs to be involved with protecting and defending apps, data, devices, infrastructure, and people.”
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