The Workforce Study showed that 61% of the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) cybersecurity professionals surveyed, 1,234 participants, feel their organization lacks a sufficient amount of cybersecurity talent (people and/or skills). The response was much greater in China, with 74% reporting the need for more professionals in the field.
This need for more cybersecurity professionals in the region not only puts pressure on working teams but can put organizations at risk of experiencing a cybersecurity attack. Overall, APAC region participants cited this as 45% feeling a moderate risk, 24% as a slight risk and 18% as an extreme risk. Some countries seem to be more concerned; reports of extreme risk came in from Taiwan at 33%, Australia at 24% and Japan 26%.
When asked in the study to describe how participants would gauge the number of IT staff dedicated to cybersecurity within their organization to prevent and troubleshoot security issues, 27% of APAC participants said that they have a significant shortage. However, 50% of those from New Zealand reported this shortage as significant. 42% of APAC participants reported a slight shortage of this staff, but this response was higher with more than 50% in Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan.
APAC Cybersecurity Workforce respondents feel that the lack of on-staff talent is causing preventable issues to occur. The report showed that participants believe the following would have been mitigated if they had a larger cybersecurity team:
- Preventable incidents, like a malware infection or potential data exposure (29%)
- Inability to remain aware of all threats active against our network (27%)
- Not enough time for proper risk assessment and management (25%)
- Misconfigured systems (25%)
- Slow to patch critical systems (24%)
- Oversights in process and procedure (24%)
Standout numbers in the above came from Malaysia, concerns were 67% for misconfigured systems and slow to patch critical systems along with an astonishing 83% concerned with oversights in processes and procedures.
“A couple of factors, we had three countries in Asia that did really well last year: Singapore, Japan, Australia. They all had a significant increase in people moving into cybersecurity careers, in part, because there was government support for making that happen because governments (globally) look at cybersecurity as both a national defense issue and a national stability issue,” said Clar. In addition, she said, “the other thing that happened that was truly a result of the pandemic in Asia is organizations went out of business so there were simply fewer businesses hiring which of course reduces the demand, that said Asia Pacific still has (approximately) 1.45 million unfilled cybersecurity positions.”
Cybersecurity leaders are progressing forward with the intent to invest in talent to help address the cybersecurity workforce gap in the region. 53% of respondents plan to invest in training, 48% are working toward providing more flexible working conditions and 44% are looking to invest in certifications.
The workforce gap alone is not the only way the region is looking to improve risk. Technology investments are also in the pipeline. 51% anticipate expanding the use of cloud service providers, 51% intend on increasing the use of intelligence and automation for manual cybersecurity tasks and 50% plan to add the application of intelligence and automation to existing cybersecurity processes. With this predicted increase in cloud usage, 41% feel the greatest need to further develop and advance their career as a cybersecurity professional is with training in cloud computing security in the next two years.
We look forward to revealing the (ISC)² 2022 Cybersecurity Workforce Study at this year’s Security Congress, virtual across the globe and in person in Las Vegas. For session information and to register, visit https://congress.isc2.org/.
The post The Cybersecurity Workforce Climate in Asia appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
September 08, 2022 at 09:09PM
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