As a technical leader at your small or medium-sized business (SMB), you know this all too well: We’re facing a significant cybersecurity talent shortage. In the U.S., more than half a million cybersecurity roles are currently unfilled—globally, this shortfall will reach 3.5 million unfilled roles by 2025! Why? The demand for cybersecurity talent rises every year. The talent pool also lacks diversity. For example, only one-quarter of the cybersecurity workforce around the world identifies as female. On top of this, many employers (not you!) have unrealistic expectations for cybersecurity talent and many workers are leaving the industry as a result. In general, one-third of the cybersecurity workforce are planning to change careers.
When you run your business with an understaffed technology team, you’re not only contributing to overworked employees, you’re also putting your operations at greater risk of a damaging cyberattack. It takes trained people to protect your perimeter, from increasingly frequent data breaches to failures to comply with various industry regulations, like customer privacy. Fortinet’s 2023 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report finds that nearly 70% of organizations indicate they face additional security risks because of staff shortages.
However, you can take steps to overcome the cybersecurity talent gap. In this post, we share several creative and effective strategies to help you close the gap and keep your SMB protected—and productive.
How to Overcome the Talent Gap
As a technology decision-maker at your SMB, you might’ve noticed that even if you’re fully staffed up, your team might be prone to burnout due to the increasing pressure and responsibility of keeping your business secure, around the clock. Often, it will be more cost-effective and appropriate for you to invest in your current employees versus finding and hiring additional staff.
One way to invest in your current employees—and contribute to competence and job satisfaction —is to offer specialized training and certifications. For example, we’re seeing greater reliance on cloud security for today’s SMBs, so you might consider a dedicated in-person cloud security workshop, online training, or certification. Investing in your team might also go beyond technical skills. Consider offering company-wide training on soft skill concepts like being a more effective leader or communicator.
At the end of the day, you may find that you simply need to hire additional cybersecurity staff. Another strategy to overcome the talent gap is to explore alternative hiring strategies. We mentioned the challenging lack of diversity in this industry; you might prioritize job postings and outreach among female cybersecurity professionals and other underrepresented communities.
You can also partner with a third-party managed security services provider, like N8 Solutions. When you partner with a trusted provider, you’ll gain instant access to a team of experts, which means that you’ll extend your existing internal team without adding significant cost or time. By nature, managed security services providers offer highly trained professionals who can manage your IT operations efficiently and cost-effectively, all in partnership with you.
Leverage Technology and Automation
Many of your cybersecurity roles and duties must be performed by human workers. However, there are several cybersecurity tools you can implement that will reduce the need to find, hire, and retain highly specialized staff. Automating some of your more routine security tasks will also free up your overworked technology team to focus on more complex issues or business-critical projects. For example, you might consider employee monitoring software, which allows you to more easily keep track of how employees spend their time to ensure that people are working on the right projects and tasks.
The right employee monitoring software also enables you to “bake” cybersecurity into everyday processes at your SMB and enforce robust security practices across your entire organization, even when users are offline. At N8 Solutions, we’re pleased to offer a best-in-class solution from Teramind, which allows you to create your own security policy and rules. You can define what exactly constitutes dangerous activity, and set actions to automatically warn, block, or lock out users when these rule violations are detected.
Create a Culture of Cybersecurity
Last but certainly not least, another strategy to overcome the talent gap is to create a culture of cybersecurity across your entire organization—not just among your technology team. At your small business, every employee has a role to play in maintaining your cybersecurity. Just take it from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): “Every owner or leader of an SMB should talk about cybersecurity to direct reports and to the entire organization.” The good news is that there are cost-effective methods to institute an ongoing cybersecurity education and awareness policy for your staff.
Educate your team on how to spot fraudulent emails, texts, or calls and provide a clear plan for what they should do if they think your business has been targeted. Also provide training on how to set strong passwords as well as best practices for securing personal devices. For more, see this post on Five Cybersecurity Training Tips your Employees Should Know.
Equipping your people and creating a culture of cybersecurity is a key component of a protected and productive SMB. At N8 Solutions, this is exactly why we take a people-first approach to security. It ensures that people understand and follow the measures you or your partners put in place.
In Conclusion
Whether you’re fully staffed up or spending way too much time trying to find and hire cybersecurity talent, help is out there! We hope this post illuminates a few of the strategies you can employ today to keep your SMB strong and secure: invest in and train your current employees, partner with a trusted third party where it makes sense, leverage automation, and create a culture of cybersecurity across your entire business.
It's never been more important to take stock of your cybersecurity strategy and the people behind it. SMBs are three times more likely to be targeted by hackers compared to larger companies and 95% of breaches are attributed to human error. Please reach out to N8 Solutions to discuss how we can help you secure your SMB and give more time back to your overworked talent so they can focus on what really matters: the growth and success of your business and a happy, satisfied team!