Huge Cybersecurity Industry Survey Reveals Concerns Over Cuts Amid New Threats

The cybersecurity industry is experiencing a wave of layoffs and budget cuts according to a new survey of nearly 15,000 industry professionals.

At least 47% of respondents said they had witnessed cutbacks at their jobs over the last year, according to industry trade group ISC2, which conducted the survey in collaboration with Forrester Research. Some 22% of these respondents reported layoffs on their team and 53% said their companies had delayed the purchase and implementation of new technologies to meet cybersecurity threats.

The survey revealed a general sense among the industry that employers are tightening their budgets and not spending as much on upgrading cybersecurity infrastructure to meet new threats, including those posed by artificial intelligence.

The survey found that the entertainment and media industry has axed the most cybersecurity jobs. The construction industry, tech companies, automotive and cloud hosting services have also cut back significantly, and the cuts seem to be starting to affect how well cybersecurity staff can adapt to new threats.

“We should be concerned about cutbacks,” Clar Rosso, chief executive of ISC2, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We have a ton of work to do on the C-suite to get them to actually understand the risks they’re putting their organizations in.”