As the threat landscape continues to evolve and cybercriminals grow in sophistication, security teams are tasked with bolstering their cybersecurity controls, expertise, and solutions. However, doing that, plus maintaining day-to-day tasks in-house has become more difficult due to the ongoing security skills gap. There’s just not enough talent to go around.
This ongoing cybersecurity skills gap is compounded by an increasingly complex threat landscape, with IT teams lacking proper skills to defend against it, which contributes to risk and poor incident outcomes. According to IBM, the security skills shortage increases the cost of a cyber attack by $251,940 USD (£188,825 GBP).
It’s critical for organisations to understand what this skills gap looks like, and what steps they can take to mitigate its effects.
Understanding the Ongoing Cybersecurity Skills Gap
As cyber attacks continue to rise in frequency across sectors – 48% of organisations admitted to being the victim of a data breach in the last 12 months – the cybersecurity skills gap is growing alongside it, putting organisations in a precarious position.
According to a new report by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DIST) in the United Kingdom (U.K.), “Across the economy, around half (44%) of businesses have skills gaps in basic technical areas. Incident management skills gaps have increased from 27% in 2020 to 48% in 2024.” Additionally, “Just under half of business (46%) have one person involved in running or managing their organisation’s cybersecurity. ”
Considering that Arctic Wolf observed a 500% increase in phishing in just a single month and has noted that 45% of security alerts happen after traditional working hours, one person is not enough to stop the rising tide of threats.
This shortage is a trend that’s moved upwards for years, but organisations are not just throwing up their hands and hoping for the best. There’s multiple strategies one can employ to make up for this shortage.
Overcoming The Cybersecurity Talent Shortage
An interesting pattern emerged in Arctic Wolf’s annual State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report. The number of organisations who stated that staffing-related issues were their top concern had dropped to 16% , which is the lowest reported since Arctic Wolf has started tracking the metric. The new report published by the U.K. Department of Science showed a similar dip in regard to staffing, with core cyber job postings decreasing by 32% between 2002 and 2023 . While Arctic Wolf’s stat tracks self-reported concerns versus the recent DIST stat that tracked job listings over time, they both may reflect how IT and security leaders have accepted that the skills gap will be an ongoing issue, and instead have shifted strategies and are increasingly looking for outside help with their cybersecurity needs.
Security operations solutions have become more prevalent since the skills gap was first observed. These commonly outsourced offerings provide some of the basic technical capabilities listed as lacking in the 2024 DIST report (incident management, penetration testing, access management, detecting and removing malware, setting up firewalls), as well as 24×7 monitoring, detection, and response to stop threat actors who are operating at all hours. Implementing SOC internally is a near-impossible task, with the cost ballooning to millions, even if the personnel were available. DIST reported that, similar to previous years, over a third of large businesses and organizations in the public sector turn to an outsourced SOC for their cybersecurity operations.
In the U.K., more training is being offered as well to add security experts to the workforce for organisations needing more help, with the report stating that the number of cyber security graduates has increased by 34%.
But, even with all these positive trends, the cybersecurity skills gap won’t reverse itself overnight, so organisations must take steps now to both retain the talent they have and increase their security posture where they can.
Three steps organisations can take are:
1. Nurture your talent and find opportunities for them to increase their skill set, so they can stay with your organisations longer instead of job hopping.
2. Build a strong security culture from the C-suite down so that the burden is not solely placed on your IT team. A C-suite that recognises the importance of security within an organisation is more likely to invest in security personnel, train those personnel, and see security as a contributor to organisational success.
3. Leverage third-party expertise and outsourced operations to increase your security posture while decreasing internal needs.
Working With a Third Party: The Value of a Security Operations Partner
As the skills gap continues, organisations need to look at staffing as just one part of their overall cybersecurity strategy, and one that may be best outsourced. The cybercrime landscape has evolved, and even if your organisation can afford multiple specialists to work around the clock – there is a better approach to help organisations not only maintain basic security controls but monitor and detect threats while reducing risk. By outsourcing personnel for tasks such as 24×7 coverage, triage, and threat detection, your organisation frees up budget and bandwidth to hire security individuals in other areas while ensuring a stronger security posture. By utlising a third-party and working with a security operations partner, an organisations can gain instant access to much-needed expertise, have 24×7 eyes-on-glass coverage, and make concrete steps along their security journey.
Arctic Wolf helps organise close those much-needed skills gap through our Concierge Delivery Model, which combines our world-class Security Teams with industry-leading technology, helping your organisations detect and respond to threats, manage vulnerabilities and other risks, improve overall security posture, and transfer risk through better insurability.
Learn more about how Arctic Wolf operates.
Explore our Security Operations report to see what risks exist for your organisation and how you can mitigate them.
