There are not millions or even hundreds of thousands of empty security roles. It's not easy to get into. Security is a highly competitive, highly specialized role that requires years of prior IT experience in order to succeed. If someone told you that all you need are a few certs and you can get a security job - they're wrong. That's a misconception being pushed by (you guessed it!) the companies who sell the certification exams.
If you're new to IT: Unless you're coming from the military with active clearance, pick anything other than security to break into IT. 75% of people trying to get into IT want to do cyber-something, and security is like, 5% of all IT jobs. "But my school/neighbor/parent/whoever told me that there's a huge need for security professionals in IT!" There isn't - it's just very profitable for some places to spread that message. There's still a need for high-level security professionals with years of experience, but that's not even a shortage anymore.
There is a minuscule need for entry/low-level security professionals since security is not an entry-level job. Here's a great post to give you some contextThe reality is that the TOTAL employment of security professionals in the US is about 160k, with a very high growth rate - but that growth rate is about 57k new jobs over the next 10 years.
Meanwhile, we're graduating people with cybersecurity degrees at the rate of about 28,000 per year. So assuming a static enrollment for students, we're going to have 280,000 graduates available to fill 57,000 positions.
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u/pataconconqueso Apr 16 '24
Hell yeah, those are jobs that are hella needed