by Constantine von Hoffman

It’s a Great Time to be Looking for an IT Security Job

Opinion
Mar 14, 20122 mins
IT JobsSecurity

Unemployment rate for information security analysts is officially ZERO.

Looking for an info security expert? Good luck. According to a new CompTIA report, 40 percent of firms report they had trouble finding cyber security personnel last year.

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As the Ninth Annual Security Trends report notes, Dice.com reports ads for info security jobs increase 79 percent from 2009 to 2011. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which just started tracking the number of information security analysts last year, reported that as of June there were 43,000 in the U.S. – a 16 percent increase over the previous quarter. However there is great news if you’re thinking of changing jobs. While the IT industry overall unemployment is only 4 percent, for IT security types that number falls to 0 – as in none.

Other findings:

  • Not surprisingly most companies are having security problems — 76 percent of all firms reported experiencing a security incident last year. This really makes me want to know what’s up with the other 24 percent? Maybe they are part of the 73 percent of companies who said they probably had a security incident which went undetected.
  • Another group I would be interested in talking to: The 2 percent who said they saw a significant to moderate decrease in the security threat level last year. That’s a 100 percent increase over the number of people who said that in 2010. At the other and more understandable end of the spectrum, 59 percent said the threat level had increased moderately and 24 percent said it was up significantly.
  • One piece of good news is that we may collectively be getting a little less stupid. The report found that while human error continues to be the No. 1 cause of security incidents, it only got 52 percent of the vote this year, compared to 59 percent the year before. Also, when we screw up the results aren’t as bad. About 48 percent of respondents said human error was only a moderate concern right now, lagging far behind malware, hacking, etc. Confusingly, 53 percent of respondents said human error is a bigger problem now than two years ago. Parse that as you like.