Empowering more endusers can be the solution to cybersecurity job gaps

In a report by Cybersecurity Ventures, the number of open cybersecurity roles increased by 350% over eight years, from 1 million in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021. The skills gap persists despite industry-wide efforts to close it, and tech companies like Microsoft are announcing plans to add millions of new jobs worldwide.

According to CyberSeek, a project funded by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are currently more than 1.1 million cybersecurity professionals working in the U.S. with an additional 770,000 positions still open.

According to CyberSeek, there are just over 90,000 CISSPs in the country, but more than 106,000 job postings demand the CISSP certification, which is the highest benchmark in the cyber security sector. There are 40,000 job openings for CISM (Certified Information Security Managers), yet only 17,000 persons have the credentials.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an information security analyst to grow by 31% more than the average for all occupations over the next ten years, making it the tenth fastest-growing profession.

Companies that struggle to fill positions with security experts are not the only ones affected by the scarcity; their IT teams also must deal with the stress that understaffing causes.

A demanding job is a cybersecurity professional. Professionals also report that a lack of security awareness among their organization's staff in general and a lack of buy-in regarding security best practices at the executive level contribute to increased stress. These issues, in addition to ongoing worries about imminent threats and the risk of missing them before they have caused irreparable damage, are reported to be sources of stress by professionals.

According to Osman Erkan, founder, and CEO of DefensX, an innovator in cloud-first cybersecurity solutions that encourage employee participation by offering simple-to-install and use software programs for browsers on any device, keeping enterprises safe is a team sport.

It is unsustainable to ask the already overworked IT and security teams to do more, and it is also not financially feasible to keep employing employees. Automation, artificial intelligence, and empowering workers to help themselves are effective today.

Erkan argued that businesses should invest in enhancing the professional skills of their teams. They should assist them in obtaining cybersecurity training. They should also find ways to distribute responsibility by using basic, cost-effective tools to prevent cyber attacks.

Virtual training sessions are held to provide complete cyber teams with up-to-date information on new risks and strategies to mitigate those threats, which has proven to be highly successful, according to Osman. Every October, we observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month because that is exactly what we do: we raise people's awareness of dangers before they affect teams and individuals.

Given investments in e-mail content security, the user clicks on a link in an email that is presumed to be secure. That link launches a web browser, and there is always a chance that a phishing assault could infect the user's device. However, the browser has already run code that might infect your computer. Under some attacks, even pop-up blockers are unable to provide protection. As an illustration, a user might click a link on their device, but the pop-up blocker prevents access, and frequently the user is unaware of this.

98% of external attacks over the previous few years, according to Gartner, were conducted via the open Internet, and 80% of those attacks were directed at end users directly through their browsers.

An enterprise's networks and systems are kept separate from the user's browsing activities through a remote browser. Successfully establishing an "air gap" between the enterprise network and unavoidable attacks limits the ability of attackers to gain a foothold, move laterally through the company, and compromise other enterprise systems to exfiltrate data.