Many IT companies are seeing their fortunes turn around and their dreams fade. They are laying off workers, cutting back, and watching their financial valuations plummet. Tech layoffs were big news in 2022, and that’s looking set to continue in 2023, too, with major companies like Amazon and Salesforce already slashing their workforces. There weren’t many major tech companies that escaped layoffs last year. Twitter, Tesla, Shopify, Microsoft, and Netflix all cut staff, some of them more than once.
At the same time that large technology businesses lay off hundreds of employees, there is a continuing demand for cybersecurity personnel. That comes as no surprise, as cybersecurity is viewed as one of the more resilient sectors for tech funding in a more conservative financial environment—though it is not immune to the overall sector slowdown. However, it is an area to pay attention to for younger professionals, school students, and staff looking to make career transfers as the tech sector’s labor pressure lowers significantly for the first time in a decade, from the largest corporations to the venture-backed startup group.
According to new research from the cybersecurity workforce analytics website CyberSeek, which was created by a collaboration of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, CompTIA, and labor market analysis agency Lightcast, there were 755,743 online job postings in cybersecurity as of December. This represented a year-over-year decrease in postings, down from 769,736 in the 12 months ending December 2021. However, with a current supply-demand ratio of 68 employees per 100 job opportunities, the United States’ need for over 530,000 more cybersecurity personnel has increased year over year.
Cybersecurity analysts, cybersecurity technology specialists, and cybercrime analysts are some of the most common entry-level occupations. These professions are more concerned with what is known as “reactive work,” such as learning about the types of dangers that companies face and determining when concerns must be examined and remediated.
As individuals advance in their cybersecurity careers, the goal is to take on more proactive work to assist firms in constructing secure digital infrastructure. There are numerous opportunities for current IT workers to transition into this field, with common entry points including community management, software development, systems engineering, and even IT help, as well as by focusing on lower-level cyber professions.
