Technology is the basis of every successful business today – including yours. That’s why we encourage you to incorporate the latest digital security tools and undergo network modernization. But with the rise of advanced technology and also cybercrime, a cybersecurity skills gap has opened up.
And we think it should worry you.
Why? Without the talent to run your technology, maintain your cybersecurity, and oversee network best practices to the highest standards, your business is at risk.
This risk covers a number of business areas, from data loss, to reputation. Here’s how.
What Impact Does the Cybersecurity Skills Gap Have on Your Business?
Some of the side-effects of not having adequately skilled cybersecurity staff may include these:
- Your business will become an easy target for attacks, because you don’t have skilled security staff who’re up to date with the latest ways of preventing cybercrime.
- You may lose important data – your client’s data, your intellectual property, and the data in your information systems are part of your assets, so data security against hacking should be a priority.
- You suffer the economic impact of any successful attack – having to repair the damage caused by these attacks and possibly pay fines for data loss.
- Your brand risks losing its reputation among your customers and partners. And if your customers can’t trust you, they may turn to your competitors.
- Your business’s ability to remain secure on an ongoing basis is shaky – no one knows how to run a proper security needs assessment that a skilled cybersecurity person usually carries out.
These are huge consequences for your business. So why are there so few experts to plug the cybersecurity gaps?
Why is the Cybersecurity Skills Shortage Increasing?
It’s a global problem. By 2025, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates, from its tracking data, that there will be 3.5 million unfilled posts globally.
However, it’s also a local problem that affects your business.
So, why is there a skills shortage even though we’re advancing in technology, and tech careers are open to anyone? Here’s our top three reasons.
1 Demand is higher than supply.
Policies to guide cybersecurity measures and the people qualified to manage them have not grown at the same rate that cybercrimes have grown. As a result, businesses cannot get the right people with the right skills in their needed areas of expertise – there are simply too few people with cybersecurity qualifications.
2 Most businesses are competing for the few highly skilled, multifaceted experts currently available.
That leaves many losers and only a few winners. It also explains why you might be thinking of outsourcing your cybersecurity needs to a third-party partner who will have available as many experts as you need.
3 Most businesses don’t train and maintain their existing IT staff with new technology.
It’s expensive to train your staff, buy new tools, and manage the latest technology. Besides, it can take years for your staff to acquire all the cybersecurity skills required to tackle hacking attacks and other cybercrimes.
The result is, you tend to get on with running your business, and the cybersecurity skills gap goes under the radar. But it can be closed. Let’s look how.
Ways to Close the Cybersecurity Skills Gap
Despite the skills gap we’ve seen above, there are two main actions you can take to start protecting yourself.
1 Learn where your chief vulnerabilities are and patch those first.
This is your initial in-house solution. If you’re a smaller business, start with the biggest risk and put your investment into covering that.
It may cost you to hire an expert and install a scanning system, but one highly trained security operations expert can teach a number of your team members various individual cybersecurity measures involved in using the system to best advantage.
It’s not the best solution but it’s an interim one while you work out the financing of external support, which is our second suggestion.
2 Seek outside support from a skilled security partner.
You probably want to run your business without having this worry about the cybersecurity skills gap. Yet you can’t ignore it. And the right talent is in short supply, as we said.
However – strange as it may seem – many of the most highly skilled experts in network maintenance and monitoring, and cybersecurity, are running their own businesses specially to provide support to companies like yours whose main skill is in doing business successfully!
So – maybe it’s time to take the second option and outsource your security needs to a specialist provider. They possess the experience and tools to keep your business protected from attacks while meeting your specific needs.
And from a cost perspective, it’s worth the investment. The cost will be scaled to your needs, but in any case, any investment pales beside the risk of a cybersecurity breach and all it can entail financially.
We can help you!
At RFIP, we think the cybersecurity skills gap should worry you now. We’re not into scare tactics, but the truth is it will definitely worry you at some point when a damaging cyberattack occurs after you’ve buried the problem for reasons of economy or time. And that will be too late to avoid some of the damage we mentioned up top.
We can help you in several ways:
- Advise you on how to modernize your network to cope with current workloads, attack surfaces, and threat prevention.
- Work as your partner by offering a security operations center, covering your needs 24/7. Even if you have an in-house Sec-Ops, they can suffer alert fatigue or a significant skills gap.
- Make sure your remote staff work safely without introducing security vulnerabilities to your whole business.
- And much more.
We work with the Best Interest Advice Model (BIAM) – meaning if it’s not in your best interests, it’s not in ours either. That’s how we believe in doing business with you.
So – if the cybersecurity skills gap is worrying you, contact is today for a free consultation, and one of our dedicated and knowledgeable representatives will get in contact with you soon.