Companies impacted by the shortfall have said that the lack of qualified security experts is having a severe impact on their business, with customers feeling the brunt of the problem. According to the report, 46 percent of businesses would like to expand their workforces by more than 16 percent in 2017, but are being held back due to the lack of candidates.
Sale el 1º report del Global Information Security Workforce Study 2017, habla sobre #millennials en #ciberseguridad: https://t.co/TlJbHWWbsq pic.twitter.com/3wsbeOD5ZT
— (ISC)² Latin America (@ISC2_Latam) 16 February 2017
However, one solution to the problem could be the recruitment of recent graduates. Only six percent of UK businesses said they would recruit young workers who recently left university, due to the lack of previous experience. 93 percent of companies said that having longevity in the industry and previous cybersecurity experience is of paramount importance.
"A continuing industry refusal to hire people without previous experience and a failure to hire university graduates means Britain is approaching a security skills cliff edge due to the perfect storm of an aging cyber workforce going into retirement and long-term failure to recruit from the younger generation," said Dr. Adrian Davis, managing director at the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) team for cybersecurity firm (ISC)²."
"We need to see more emphasis on recruiting millennials and on training talent in-house rather than companies expecting to buy it off the shelf. There is a need to nurture the talent that is already in this country and recruit from the fresh pool of talent that is graduating from university," he added.
According to the report, the failure to diversify could become a vicious circle deterring younger generations from pursuing cybersecurity professions, with research demonstrating that millennials are far more diverse than previous generations and more likely to be attracted to workplaces that represent the demographic.
