More IT Professionals Turn to Cybersecurity Roles
While more U.S. IT professionals are pleased with their jobs, a new report reveals that just over half of them are interested in careers in cybersecurity.
Good thing, too. Of the 6 million open technology jobs in the United States, 2 million are in cybersecurity, said Edie Fraser, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy STEM Connector. What’s more, additional cybersecurity professionals are necessary, experts say, to help stem the tide of increasing data breaches.
Evaluating IT Workforce Needs, a new report from Downers Grove, Ill.-based IT industry association CompTIA, shows that nearly eight out of 10 IT professionals report being mostly satisfied with their jobs overall. And 51 percent of the 820 IT professionals surveyed expressed an interest in working on cybersecurity-related issues.
That’s ahead of the 30 percent interested in working on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the 20 percent considering artificial intelligence (AI).
“The tech industry’s challenge is America’s challenge: developing a robust workforce that can effectively fill the IT jobs of the 21st century, whether those jobs are in cybersecurity, IoT, AI or some new technology that’s still to come,” said Nancy Hammervik, executive vice president of industry relations at CompTIA.