Back Ground

A recent article in Net Security 1/21/2015 titled Global shortage of skilled cybersecurity pros caught my attention. The article referenced a survey that ISACA conducted where 92% of survey respondents whose organization will be hiring cybersecurity professionals in 2015 say it will be difficult to find skilled candidates.  I wrote a related post a little more than six months ago (see Security Specialist Job Statistics) based upon my personal research, which found nearly 16k jobs open across the United States, which required information security skills. The demand continues to rise dramatically and I when I ran a high level inquiry today, I saw nearly 150k open positions requiring the same information security skills.  Washington DC alone has nearly 12k position now open. The US Department of Labor estimated an increase of 37% (much faster than average) from 2012 to 2022 and this was double the estimates in growth for all other computer occupations but they seem to have underestimated the current demand.

Degree Programs

I continued to do some research on graduate schools offering degrees in computer security and found 161 campus and hybrid degree programs and graduate schools in the field of computers and technology offering certificates, Doctorate and Masters degrees in the security discipline. Of these, there were:

• 38 offering Certificates
• 16 offering Doctorate degree
• 144 offering Masters Degree
• 76 with on campus programs
• 5 with Hybrid programs and
• 80 with Online programs

I found additional interesting security job outlook and degree programs information at the Criminal Justice Degree Schools site.  This site contains a Ponemon Institute survey of the top schools with security degree programs  and  detailed information on a few select institutions. It was much harder to find good numbers on the total number of yearly graduates for this discipline. My instinct tells me it is well below the demand but I will need to continue my research to validate that opinion.

People Having Security Skills

Here are some comparisons with my last data from June 2014:

There were 1,380,905 people with information security skills in the US in June, there are now 1,584,293 and:

~11% of these in the Washington DC area in June now 16.5%,

~7% of these are in the greater New York City, unchanged as of now,

~5% of these are in the San Francisco area, unchanged as of now, and

~3% of these are in the greater Boston area, unchanged as of now.

In June these cities accounted for 1/4 of the total people with CISSP skills they now account for 30%

Next I searched for people with CISSP skills with the following results. In June there were 72,735 people with CISSP in the United States now there are 79, 002 and:

~18% of these in the Washington DC area in June, still 18%,

~6% of these are in the greater New York City, still 6%,

~3% of these are in the greater Boston area, still 3%, and

~3% of these in the Chicago area, still 3%.

From these numbers one can see a growth of roughly 9% in CISSP employees in the workforce. It is interesting to see that Washington DC continues to lead in cyber security related positions, which is a reflection of the emphasis placed by the government in this area.

Disclaimer

The ideas expressed in this blog are not intended to reflect the views of my employer and are my own personal views. This blog’s content is educational in nature and does not reflect any endorsement by my employer. The content is intended to be informational in nature and any action(s) taken by the reader should be considered as the personal responsibility of the reader.