What’s Behind the IT Security Workforce Shortage?

September 19th, 2016

The following is a guest post by Gur Shatz, co-founder and CTO, Cato Networks.

An unfortunate side effect of the explosive growth in IT security over the past five to ten years is a startling shortage of qualified workers. Last year, the global cybersecurity organization ISACA found that 60 percent of cybersecurity professionals they surveyed said less than half of the prospective job candidates in their field were qualified. Even worse, 54 percent of respondents said that it took at least three months to fill open cybersecurity roles, and that one in 10 open positions are never filled. Understaffed IT security teams leave companies open to a wide range of threats including phishing, DDoS, ransomware, ID theft and internal attacks.