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Businesses are seeking cybersecurity professionals because they need people who can protect systems, manage risk and respond to threats—but demand does not mean there is one reliable count of vacant jobs. Workforce size, reported staffing shortages, skills gaps and job-posting data measure different things. The pressure also shapes security teams’ day-to-day work, including time to learn, role boundaries and whether leaders treat security as a business priority.
Here, “cybersecurity professionals” means people doing defensive security work for organizations. It does not mean malicious hackers; “ethical hackers” is appropriate for specialists authorized to test systems.
Why demand is difficult to measure
Several commonly cited figures describe different parts of the labor market. A workforce estimate counts people working in the field; a staffing-shortage survey records what respondents say their organizations lack; a skills-gap survey asks whether teams have the capabilities they need. Job-posting data, in turn, reflects advertised openings in a specified place and period. None of these measures, alone, is a count of all current vacancies.
| Measure | What it tells you | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Workforce size and growth | An estimate of how many people work in cybersecurity and how that estimate changed over a stated period. | How many jobs are currently open or how many employers cannot fill them. |
| Reported staffing shortage | Whether survey respondents say their organization lacks enough cybersecurity staff. | A verified vacancy count across all employers. |
| Reported skills gap | Whether respondents say their teams lack needed skills. | That adding headcount alone would close the gap. |
| Job-posting data | Advertised roles in the geography and date range covered by the source. | A timeless or global measure of demand. |
ISC2’s 2024 study estimated a global cybersecurity workforce of 5.5 million, up 0.1% year over year. In that study, 67% of respondents reported a staffing shortage and 90% reported skills gaps on their teams. These are survey findings, not a tally of vacant positions. ISC2’s 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Study
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The figures should not be treated as a continuous trend line with later survey results. ISC2’s 2023 study reported respondent-reported staff shortages of 67%, skills gaps of 92%, and a 12.6% year-over-year increase in its workforce-gap estimate. Those are historical findings from that study and its methodology, not a current vacancy count. ISC2’s 2023 Cybersecurity Workforce Study
Why organizations need both more capacity and different skills
Security work spans prevention, monitoring, incident response, risk management and secure system design. An organization may have staff but still lack particular expertise, or may have skilled people who lack the time to apply it across all the work assigned to them. That distinction helps explain why a skills shortage and a staffing shortage can appear together.
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ISC2’s 2025 study emphasized skills shortages alongside staffing pressure and did not include a workforce-gap estimate that year. Among respondents, 34% said their organization had the right level of cybersecurity staffing, while 32% said they felt overworked because of shortages. The findings describe respondents’ experiences, not every employer’s circumstances. ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study
Hiring is only one way to increase capability. ISC2 recommends widening skills and talent pools, including multiskilling and investing in existing personnel. Its study puts the advice this way: “Organizations must find ways to widen their skills base and talent pools — including investing in existing personnel through multiskilling and skills investment — despite budgetary constraints, to bolster cybersecurity capability and meet demand.”
How shortages show up in everyday work
Respondents to ISC2’s 2025 study described practical constraints that can limit how well teams keep pace with security needs:
- 28% said they did not have enough time to stay current on security issues.
- 23% reported inadequate training opportunities.
- 22% said they were responsible for security work outside their area of expertise.
These are reported conditions among survey respondents, not proof that every security team faces the same workload. They do illustrate why headcount is an incomplete measure of readiness: a team can be staffed and still lack protected learning time, training or coverage for specialized responsibilities. ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study
How cybersecurity demand affects business culture
The cultural effects are most directly visible within security teams and in how the wider organization supports them. In ISC2’s 2025 study, 23% of respondents identified leadership failing to prioritize cybersecurity as a critical business function as a source of job dissatisfaction. Another 17% cited a lack of flexible work arrangements. These responses point to tensions between the importance assigned to security and the resources or working conditions practitioners experience; they do not establish that all companies share those tensions. ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study
When teams lack time to learn or are routinely assigned work beyond their expertise, organizations may find it harder to build skills internally and sustain security work. When leaders treat cybersecurity as a core business function, it is more feasible to make training, staffing and clear responsibility part of planning rather than leaving security to absorb competing demands. The survey findings show reported workplace experiences; they do not prove that hiring pressure causes broader changes in corporate culture.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where to look for U.S. workforce and career data
For U.S. labor-market indicators and cybersecurity career pathways, NIST points readers to CyberSeek. The search result describes a data period of May 2024 through April 2025, so figures drawn from the dashboard should be dated and checked against the underlying dashboard rather than presented as current indefinitely. CyberSeek’s measures are a complement to ISC2’s international survey perspectives, not the same kind of evidence. NIST: CyberSeek
What employers can do beyond recruiting
Organizations can respond to demand by making their existing security capability more sustainable, as well as by recruiting. The survey evidence supports attention to both staffing and skills, while leaving each employer to assess its own roles and risks.
Quick Recap
- Broaden entry paths. Consider candidates with transferable skills and build pathways into security work, rather than limiting hiring to people with identical prior job titles.
- Invest in current staff. Make training and skills development an ongoing part of workforce planning, including multiskilling where it fits the work.
- Protect learning time. Treat staying current as part of the job, not an extra task that must compete with a full workload.
- Clarify responsibility. Identify when security work requires specialist expertise and provide access to the right support instead of relying on staff to cover unfamiliar areas by default.
- Make leadership support visible. Connect cybersecurity priorities to staffing, training and operational decisions so practitioners are not left to reconcile high expectations with insufficient capacity.
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