Inside Cybersecurity’s Booming 2016 Job Market

The cybersecurity industry is predicted to see a huge boost this year in the form of 1 million job openings, a new report from Cisco found.

Forecasts continue to show the burgeoning cybersecurity market could grow from $105 billion in 2015 to as much as $170 billion by 2020. With the ever-growing threat of cybercriminals, cybersecurity professionals are in hot demand, and the trend is expected to continue well into the new year.

In North America alone, MarketResearch predicts the cybersecurity market will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.32 percent over the period of 2014–2019.

Michael Brown, CEO at Symantec, told Forbes that the demand for cybersecurity professionals is expected to rise globally to 6 million by 2019, with a projected shortage of 1.5 million.

While cybersecurity budgets have surged as a result of ongoing and increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, Trend Micro’s Tom Kellermann recently told Financial Times that despite more money being thrown at the problem, security teams can only do so much. 

“Even if we get authority in the budget to hire, where the hell are we going to find them?” Kellermann explained, noting that while there are plenty of openings, it is still “very difficult to find the appropriate talent.”

FT cited research from recruitment analysts Burning Glass, which showed that while there were nearly 50,000 job openings for CISSP-certified employees in the U.S. in 2014 alone, only 103,000 people worldwide hold a CISSP cybersecurity certification.

Burning Glass’ data confirmed that cybersecurity positions are more difficult to recruit for and also took 14 percent longer to fill in the U.S., compared to other jobs.

“You need people who know the technology but can also speak the language of the boardroom and translate tech talk into understanding for the C-suite,” Mark Brown, U.K. and Ireland executive director of cybersecurity and resilience for EY, told FT.

Experts at (ISC)² expect to see the demand for cybersecurity professionals to spike by 10.8 percent each year from 2014 to 2019, with the supply only increasing by 5.6 percent over the same time range.