14 July 2017

A surge in interest from candidates has helped shrink Britain’s cyber security skills gap, according to global job site Indeed.

At the start of this year, the firm found that the country’s cyber security skills gap was the second worst in the world after Israel. But its latest study published in June revealed that the shortage of professionals with the most in-demand skills has “eased” by 36 per cent in the last two years.

By tracking the number of cyber security roles advertised on Indeed and the number of clicks from candidates, researchers were able to gauge the difference between demand and supply. Between the first quarter of 2015 and the same period this year, the company says that while the share of cyber security job postings rose by 2.8 per cent, the share of candidate clicks increased by 40.3 per cent. 

According to Indeed, the rapidly rising level of interest helped narrow the skills gap “dramatically” at the end of 2016 and start of 2017, even if an overall 42.7 per cent mismatch showed that demand is still more than double supply.

Within cyber security, the researchers found the greatest skills gap was in cloud security. Here, the share of jobs posted exceeded candidate interest by nearly ten to one (see table below).

Mariano Mamertino, EMEA economist at Indeed, said: “While the skills gap has narrowed, demand from recruiters is still double the supply of candidates, forcing many at risk companies to offer increasingly attractive packages to woo the talent they need to protect one of their most precious assets – data.”