Cyber security professionals skip training due to job demands

Most cyber security professionals are too busy to stay up to date with training, and their employers aren’t helping.

That’s one of the concerning findings revealed by new research carried out by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA).

Almost every cyber security professional (96 per cent) surveyed for the joint report agreed their organisation would be at a disadvantage against cyber threats if they didn’t keep up to date on the latest cyber threats.

However, two-thirds said the demands of their job meant it was tough to keep on top of training.

Titled ‘The Life and Times of Cybersecurity Professionals’, the collaborative research also revealed that less than two-fifths of organisations (38 per cent) provide the right level of training and education on today’s cyber threats, while 27 per cent say their company should be doing more to make sure they are sufficiently clued-up.

Seven in ten of the survey’s respondents said their firm had been affected by a cyber security skills shortage, with areas most affected being security investigations and analysis (31 per cent), application security (31 per cent) and cloud security (29 per cent).