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The Unbelievable Demand for Cybersecurity Workers
By 2021, there will be roughly 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs across the globe
Angela Gunn is fried. With three cases going and a fourth just getting started, this is one of those frantic periods when it feels as if she works in an ER or at a fire station rather than holding a staff position with a computer security firm.
It’s people like Gunn that organizations large and small call if they’ve had a data breach or suspect they have. People in the industry — cybersecurity, if you’d like, though Gunn’s preference is information security, or “info-sec” for short — call this “incident response.” To my mind, though, they’re the online world’s firefighters: those who rush to put out the flames and then assess the damage.
As an incident response consultant for British security firm BAE Systems, Gunn is in charge of assembling a small crew for each case. Typically, that includes an analyst who can pore over computer logs, a malware specialist, and those she dubs “forensic workers, except without the formaldehyde smell and ripped-open chest cavities.” That is, if she can find any live bodies to do the work.
“Right now, I’d sell a right toe for a forensics guy,” Gunn says. “Like a lot of people in info-sec right now, we’re…
