The new research from EMA has found that a shortage of skilled IT security staff is growing further.
The IT security skills gap is getting bigger across the globe, according to the latest report from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a data management research firm.
The report “How Automation and Orchestration can Help Bridge the IT Security Skills Gap,” reveals that in the US organizations with at least 500 employees, on average 1,324 positions are still open!
Inputs from 200 IT executives who are in IT security roles say that the average number of unfilled positions number increased by between 1% and 25% over the last year. Cybercriminals are using AI and machine learning to take advantage of the increasing skills gap to exploit vulnerabilities and execute multi-stage attacks quickly.
As many employees are working from home, organizations are turning to their security tools providers for help related to deeper levels of tool integration. They also believe that effective automation and better orchestration will help to enable their existing practitioners to operate more efficiently.
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Although security has made great strides in automating the detection and mitigation capabilities of defenders, it has also created the need to acquire more skills. This has increased the demand for talented IT security staff.
To reduce the gap between security and operations teams, it is necessary to apply workflow automation and orchestration to more complex tasks of finding and remediating vulnerabilities for faster patching. The report further added that security teams can streamline the handling of security incidents by deploying security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platforms.
The IT security skills gap continues to widen mainly because organizations lack strategic planning when it comes to cybersecurity. Enterprises that need highly-skilled employees to ensure the business is secure are not taking the right steps to nurture the talent.
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Lack of training and career development can also have a negative impact on the effectiveness of a company’s CISO and how employees perceive their boss.
Another way to optimize the existing cybersecurity talent is for CISOs to become more effective to ensure that the right measures are being taken and the burden of company safety is being shared across the whole enterprise.
