A new study by CyberSN warns that the overall number of cybersecurity job postings in the US decreased by 22% from 2022 to 2023.
The cyber job platform provider added that this decline is alarming and could impact national security, as some of these roles are essential for maintaining organizational and national cyber defenses.
The most significant decline is in research roles, which saw a general 69% drop year-on-year between 2022 and 2023.
According to CyberSN, this suggests a move away from proactive threat analysis and mitigation.
Job postings for engineer roles have also significantly decreased, with the most posted role in the cybersecurity field, security engineer, experiencing a 21% drop.
Meanwhile, product security engineers' job ads have plummeted by 57%.
Deidre Diamond, founder and CEO of CyberSN, said that she was particularly worried by the decline in job postings for product security engineers and DevSecOps roles (-43% year-on-year).
“[This] represents a direct threat to our national cybersecurity infrastructure. These roles are vital for developing secure products and integrating security throughout the development process, and their reduction is alarming,” she said.
However, according to the CyberSN study, not all cyber roles are in decline. For instance, response roles saw the largest growth, with a 100% increase in job postings, indicating a shift towards reactionary measures rather than preventative strategies.
According to Dom Glavach, CSO and CTO at CyberSN, these findings highlight “the broader economic pressures and regulatory changes shifting strategic priorities creating potential and inadvertent cyber resilience debt for companies. The fluctuations in open positions suggest organizations are focusing more on the immediate threat response and high-level security strategy to accomplish regulatory compliance."
In October 2023, a study by the cybersecurity association ISC2 found that the global cybersecurity workforce gap had reached four million people, which represented a 12.6% increase compared to 2022.
The CyberSN report draws from over 140,000 monthly cybersecurity job postings across 45 functional cybersecurity roles over the past two years.