It’s happy days for skilled security professionals for the rest of 2015, says a report from Robert Half Technology which reveals that almost half (47%) of UK CIOs predict they will appoint additional IT security personnel this year.
The drive is in response to a corporate environment facing ever-increasing threats. The survey found that as many as 93% of CIOs believe the number of security threats detected by their firms has either increased or stayed the same in the past year, leading them to spend, on average, a fifth of their IT budget on security.
Mobile and the cloud are key areas of concern. Indeed the report found that 45% of CIOs say that they will enhance cloud security in 2015 while 29% expect to enhance and/or implement mobile device security.
The typical measures businesses are taking to protect companies’, customers’ or employees’ personal information span a wide range, from anti-virus software (72%), password generator or management systems (48%), network security systems such as firewalls (44%), multi-factor authentication services (38%), and hard drive encryption (31%).
Yet despite the clear indication of growing threats, only a quarter of companies plan to enhance employee training in IT security issues and only 7% will introduce more stringent vetting of firms that have access to their data.
“The demand for skilled IT security professionals is on the rise as businesses of all sizes are recognizing the importance of IT security and are conscious they need to strive to continuously meet best practice standards or risk being vulnerable to an IT security threat,” commented Robert Half Technology director Neil Owen.
“Increased investment in cloud and mobile security by organizations is following hard on the heels of greater take-up of those technology platforms, so IT security professionals with these specialist skills and experience will be most in demand. However, it will also be important to have broad experience of overall security measures and how to protect corporate, customer, and personal data, taking account of internal threats as well external risks.”
But a word of caution: Robert Half Technology added that as IT security professionals with the right combination of skills and experience would be in high demand for the foreseeable future, it will be important for businesses to provide attractive remuneration packages.