Will IT Security Suffer Due to Lack of Candidates?

Don’t let the difficulty of finding a qualified candidate for full-time employment delay your IT security readiness.

Consider the alternatives, if even only short-term.

AIS Data Centers can help.

Summary article by David Weldon in FierceCIO.

Emphasis in red added by me.

Brian Wood

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Will cloud, security hires break the bank in 2015?

Big data and data analytics have been grabbing much of the headlines this year for top IT job demand. But CIOs are being warned to brace for an extremely competitive market for IT security professionals and virtually any cloud-related jobs in 2015, both of which should push salaries up significantly.

Cybersecurity is finally front-and-center on the radar of organizations, with most reporting that they have suffered a cyber incident in the past year or expect to in the next 12 months. The result is a scramble in the workforce for skilled IT security professionals.

But as an article at eWEEK points out, the demand for IT security pros far outweighs supply right now. Citing research from Ernst & Young, the article notes that “companies will spend marginally more on technology and staff to defend their IT systems and data in 2015, but they continue to have problems hiring knowledgeable security professionals.”

As evidence, the Ernst & Young data reveals that more than half of organizations say the difficulty in hiring skilled security talent is a key reason why they haven’t been able to improve security efforts in the first place. That fact does not bode well for IT overall as we head into the new year, considering that that cyberattacks are increasing in both number and intensity.

While one might wonder how they arrived at the figure, sources at Cisco have placed the IT security pro shortfall at 1 million workers worldwide, the article points out.

These IT pros are on Cloud 9

Meanwhile, IT professionals with any sort of cloud computing skills will be on Cloud 9 this coming year, says staffing firm Dice.com

In its November jobs report, Dice President Shravan Goli wrote, “What’s consistently one of the fastest-growing skills for job postings on Dice, boasts above average salaries, and is changing the way companies–small and large–are thinking about data storage? It’s cloud, and the future for tech professionals with this experience is anything but gloomy.”

Dice offers a few examples of how certain cloud-related skills have increased in demand this year. SaaS, virtualization, vCloud and Salesforce are all tops in demand.

“Salesforce hit 1,000 job postings in April this year and continues to grow in popularity, with job postings up 26 percent year/year on Dice,” Goli explains.

To illustrate just how pervasive cloud computing skills have become, Dice shared examples of job postings from its database with FierceCIO that show how cloud skills are utilized in a job posting:

Goli also brings the conversation back full circle, noting that “you can’t have a conversation about cloud without the mention of security. Companies are looking for security professionals who can communicate best practices to colleagues, define vulnerabilities and act quickly in the unfortunate event of a breach.”

http://www.fiercecio.com/story/will-cloud-security-hires-break-bank-2015/2014-11-14