“Companies must continually improve the skills of cybersecurity professionals”, says Kaspersky official

A recent study shows that more than 70% of companies pay more than 100 thousand dollars (92 thousand euros) annually in additional training to keep their employees’ cybersecurity skills up to date.

In “The portrait of the modern Information Security professional”, prepared by Kaspersky, the topic of the global shortage of cybersecurity professionals was addressed, analyzing the exact reasons why companies lack specialists and identifying the ways in which they evaluate and improve their Skills.

The numbers show that around 41% of companies around the world and 31% in Europe feel a shortage of professionals and report that their teams need to reinforce resources. In Europe, they argue that the lack of growth opportunities in the organization (64%), excess stress (58%) and monotonous work without new challenges (47%) are some of the reasons that make it difficult to retain professionals.

Regarding investment by companies, data shows that they are investing significant amounts in improving the skills of their cybersecurity teams: 43% of organizations say they usually spend between 100 and 200 thousand dollars per year on information security courses, while 31% invest more than 200 thousand dollars in training programs. The remaining 26% say they usually pay less than $100,000 for educational initiatives.

Furthermore, many cybersecurity professionals globally (39%) and in Europe (37%) believe that corporate training is not enough, and say that to remain competitive in the market and keep their knowledge and skills up to date, they are willing to pay for additional training courses with their own money.

“With a constantly evolving threat landscape, companies must continually improve the skills of cybersecurity professionals to be well prepared for sophisticated cyberattacks. Developing specialists within the company and creating internal skills can be an effective strategy for organizations that want to retain existing employees, allowing them to grow professionally, rather than constantly looking for new candidates and checking their professional background and practical skills ”, argues Veniamin Levtsov, VP, Center of Corporate Business Expertise at Kaspersky.