Cybersecurity and IoT Industry Facing Skill Shortage Leading to Development Issues

Businesses in the UK are going through a tough phase while finding the correct blend of cybersecurity and IoT skills, according to a report by Experis Industry Insider. The study examines the growth of IoT and how it is impacting the cybersecurity jobs market. As the industry professionals witnessing the emergence of IoT, they are becoming more considerate about the need of secured net for driving staff to perform efficiently in IoT empowered system.

An insight by Gartner foresees that 25 billion IoT-connected objects over the network will be used by 2021 giving a huge opportunity for businesses to equip data and optimize their operations for better user experience.

Looking at the other face of the coin, the emergence of IoT also invites a bundle of cyber threats to the desk. To succeed in the IoT world the businesses need to ensure the safety from exposing data to dangers.

Security enforcement should not be done only at the outer level; it needs to be inculcated during the building process of IoT devices only. Such devices become less vulnerable to cyber-attacks are less likely to attract malicious guests.

Let’s have a look at the stats presented by Experis Industry report:

• The report depicts – there were around 13,214 cybersecurity jobs showed in Q4 2018 — up 10 percent year-on-year and 16.6 percent from the previous quarter.

• Average cybersecurity salaries plunged 2 percent year-on-year to €58,557, whereas contractor day rates rose by 19.6% during the same period, to €505.

• The study discovered that while cybersecurity professionals demand keeps on rising, businesses are prioritizing short terms solutions hiring on a contract basis rather permanent hiring on their talent base.

• At present IoT is smaller jobs market, but the demand for IoT related roles also soared 48.8% to 4,968 in Q4 2018 — from 3,338 in the previous quarter.

• Permanent salaries and contractor as well, day rates also soared year-on-year, by 1.5% and 4% respectively.

• Demand for IoT technology skills is accelerating and are expected to soar even higher over the next few years.

With the flourishment of the cybersecurity market already, enterprises will need to think upon creative solutions to both skill sets which is necessary for secure nurturing of IoT technology.

Martin Ewings, director of Specialist Markets, Experis said that – “IoT offers huge opportunities for organizations if they have the right cyber security foundations in place to take advantage of new innovations safely. We can see that there is a strong demand for top talent, but the market is struggling to keep pace. Businesses are having to be creative and take a blended approach to their talent acquisition strategies – tapping into the contractor market to build a hybrid team of permanent and temporary workers. In doing so, they can have fast access to the skills they need right now while taking a longer-term view by building permanent capabilities and investing the time required to enable strategic development.”

• Job titles analysis reveals that front line workers are most in demand.

• More open vacancies are there in cybersecurity including security engineers, consultants, architects, analysts, and others.

Ewings further added, “The rise of IoT is transforming the world of cybersecurity and the focus is now on being able to spot, isolate and deal with anomalies in data.”

According to Ewings, “As more devices are connected, data is continually passing in and out of an organization. Trying to put a wall around all of it simply is not possible, so cybersecurity is shifting towards allowing data to pass unhindered, but monitoring it for unusual or unexpected patterns. We’re seeing the skills that are most in demand shift with this trend – from security information and event management (SIEM), in tools like LogRhythm, QRadar, and Splunk; to auditing and compliance experience with Qualys or knowledge of implementing holistic security tools from Sophos or Symantec.”