Here’s a sobering bit of data: there is an employment crisis in information security. By 2019, there will be 6 million job openings for information security professionals—but only 4.5 million security professionals to fill those roles. That’s a vast shortfall, especially for an industry that helps protect critical data—it’s like learning that the US military is missing 1.5 million soldiers. How can enterprises protect themselves despite staffing constraints?
The cybersecurity jobs outlook doesn’t just mean bad news for your critical data. Rather, it’s going to have marked effects on the entire security landscape going forward. Inequities between the largest and smallest companies will intensify. The ways in which security tools are designed and used will have to change in order to pick up the slack. The ramifications may even force the information security industry to change for the better—but before that, things will definitely get worse.
Information Security Inequality
If there are going to be 6 million information security jobs in 2019, but only 4.5 million administrators to fill them, what happens if you’re one of the 4.5 million? If you’re past the early part of your career, you become exceedingly well-paid. The cybersecurity jobs outlook means that the average information security administrator will earn 9% more than bog-standard IT staff, and achieve a median salary of nearly $100,000 per year.
Inevitably, this means the most talented information security professionals are going to flock, in large numbers, to the largest companies. In the meantime, smaller companies will suffer even more. Small businesses are the target of 43% of phishing campaigns, and 29% of small businesses have already been targeted by ransomware (alongside 57% of medium-sized businesses). Tragically, most small businesses that are targeted by these attacks go out of business within six months.
Sidestepping the Cybersecurity Jobs Outlook
Here’s one unexpected reason that the cybersecurity jobs outlook is going to eventually make things better for information security: automation. Essentially, the relative dearth of information security professionals is going to make even relatively large companies feel the pinch. The staff they will be able to hire will be tremendously overworked—and to a large extent, they are already.
In short, this means that there’s a market for an information security product that will ameliorate the scarcity of information security professionals by acting as a force multiplier. Machine learning is going to automate the costly, labor intensive process of detecting malware, quarantining infected systems, and remediating the damage. This is the way it should have been all along—the industry should have recognized automation as a priority from the beginning
Automating Information Security with SentinelOne
By training our computers to automatically recognize, mitigate, and remediate attacks, the cybersecurity industry will be able to route around its personnel problem. Better still, it will be able to achieve a level of consistency and accuracy that’s been unprecedented in information security products.
SentinelOne offers a robust platform that can reliably protect endpoints and servers while cutting down on human intervention. A lightweight behavioral detection engine means that systems don’t even require an internet connection in order to receive the benefits. For more information, and to understand the ways in which Next Generation Endpoint Protection can squash malware, download our buyer’s guide today.
