Report: Valley cybersecurity employment trends above national average
The Valley is bucking a national trend for cybersecurity employment.
Demand for cybersecurity talent continues to outpace supply despite growth in available education and training programs, according to a recent report from CyberSeek, which tracks information on the U.S. cybersecurity industry. Still, the Phoenix metro has more than enough workers to fill available jobs, the study found.
CyberSeek indicates more than 225,000 workers are needed to fill cybersecurity roles in the U.S. More than 1.2 million people are employed in cybersecurity roles nationwide as the industry has steadily grown over the past several years.
CyberSeek’s data shows there’s roughly 85 cybersecurity workers available for every 100 jobs open at companies in the U.S., while the Phoenix metro area has 110 workers available for every 100 available jobs. That ratio points to balanced workforce supply and demand in the Valley’s cybersecurity industry, according to CyberSeek.
Valley employers posted 6,867 job advertisements for cybersecurity-related positions from May 2023 to April 2024, while more than 17,300 workers were employed in the industry. In Arizona, there was 9,896 job postings and 25,448 people employed in the cybersecurity industry as of April, according to CyberSeek’s report.
CyberSeek released its second quarter cybersecurity workforce findings Wednesday at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s annual conference held in Dallas. To compile the report, CyberSeek examined government employment data and job posting data from Lightcast, which scrapes local and national company career boards for open positions.
“As competition for talent grows across sectors and from other in-demand occupations, we must develop alternative pathways to careers in cybersecurity that develops diverse talent in communities across America to provide opportunities [for] good-paying jobs,” Rodney Petersen, director of NICE, said in a statement.
CyberSeek is a joint initiative of NIST’s NICE program, CompTIA and Lightcast.
Nationwide, there was 469,930 cybersecurity job postings from May 2023 to April 2024 representing a 29% decrease over the prior year period. The most in-demand positions include network engineers, systems administrators, and cybersecurity engineers and analysts, among others.
“Although demand for cybersecurity jobs is beginning to normalize to pre-pandemic levels, the longstanding cyber talent gap persists,” Will Markow, vice president of applied research at Lightcast, said in a statement. “At the same time, new threats and technologies are causing cybersecurity skill requirements to evolve at a breakneck pace, forcing employers, educators, and individuals to proactively anticipate and prepare for an ever-changing cyber landscape.”
The cybersecurity worker shortage is driven in part by rapid evolution of the industry landscape, outpacing development of workers with specialized skillsets, according to a World Economic Forum report.
Other factors contributing to the workforce shortage include the inability of certain employers to compete with salaries offered by other organizations, misalignment among educational programs, evolving needs of the cybersecurity industry and lack of clarity about career opportunities in the field, the report said.
Valley cybersecurity industry expected to grow
The Valley’s burgeoning cybersecurity industry has attracted additional investment in the past year.
Last year, Phoenix-based Right-Hand Cybersecurity raised $5 million to grow its operations in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific region and support integration of its technologies used by large enterprise companies in the banking, utilities and energy industries, the Business Journal previously reported.
Valley IT recruitment firm HireRising has also benefitted from growing demand in the AI, data and cybersecurity industries as companies need skilled workers to configure software tools, HireRising CEO Graham Greytak told the Business Journal in March.
What’s more, MARS Suite, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, aims to gain a foothold in the Arizona market with plans to double its workforce within a year.
MARS Suite CEO Mark Dallmeier told the Business Journal in April that the Valley represents a “massive market opportunity” for cybersecurity amid a growing number of data centers, biotech startups, semiconductor technologies and large, global defense companies.