A new study by CyberSN warns that the overall number of cybersecurity jobs in the United States will decline by 22% from 2022 to 2023.
Cyber recruitment platform providers say this decline is concerning and could have national security implications, as some of these roles are essential to maintaining organizational and national cyber defenses. he added.
The most notable decline was in research jobs, which saw an overall 69% year-over-year decline from 2022 to 2023.
According to CyberSN, this signals a shift away from proactive threat analysis and mitigation.
Job openings for engineering positions have also decreased significantly, with the number of job openings for security engineers, the most sought-after job in the cybersecurity field, decreasing by 21%.
Meanwhile, job ads for product security engineers plummeted by 57%.
Deidre Diamond, founder and CEO of CyberSN, said she was particularly concerned about the decline in job openings for product security engineer and DevSecOps roles (down 43% year-over-year).
“[This] This represents a direct threat to national cybersecurity infrastructure. These roles are essential to developing secure products and integrating security throughout the development process, and their decline is alarming,” she said.
However, not all cyber roles are in decline, according to CyberSN research. For example, the response role has grown the most, and the number of job openings has increased by 100%. This marks a shift towards reactive rather than preventive strategies.
According to Dom Glavach, CSO and CTO at CyberSN, these findings show that “broader economic pressures and regulatory changes that shift strategic priorities are forcing companies to potentially and inadvertently reduce their cyber resilience.” This highlights the fact that the company is creating debt. The change in open positions suggests that organizations are placing greater emphasis on immediate threat response and high-level security strategies to achieve regulatory compliance. ”
In October 2023, the global cybersecurity talent shortage reached 4 million people, an increase of 12.6% compared to 2022, according to a study by the cybersecurity association ISC2.
The CyberSN report is based on more than 140,000 monthly cybersecurity job listings across 45 cybersecurity functional roles over the past two years.
