The dearth of security talent is driving a bigger appetite for managed security services

Our latest HFS Research cybersecurity survey has revealed interesting facts that could be correlated:

• Eighty-two percent (82%) of the cybersecurity executives polled agreed that a shortage of people with cybersecurity skills is driving increased use of managed services.
• More than eight out of ten executives (81%) also highlighted that the global cybersecurity skills shortage is leading to a high “burn out” and/or attrition rate amongst existing cybersecurity staff.

The majority of organizations are offsetting the loss of current cybersecurity staff with an increased consumption of managed security services. It appears that the primary reason for such a move is to gain immediate access to cybersecurity resources needed to run day-to-day cybersecurity operations, as seventy-nine percent (79%) of cybersecurity executives mentioned that cybersecurity staff is spending most of its time clearing operations backlog rather than focusing on improvements. Seventy-seven percent (77%) highlighted that they are spending a significant amount of time training inexperienced employees and seventy-four percent (74%) reported that the workload on existing cybersecurity staff has significantly intensified, leading to increased human errors.

While this situation is a welcome news for managed security service providers (MSSPs), it puts a lot of pressure on them as they need to demonstrate to their enterprise clients that they can sustain and continuously improve their processes and technology to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape across the ecosystem. Adopting the traditional “keep the lights on” approach is certainly not enough and acceptable.

The Bottom Line: Organizations are increasing their consumption of managed security services but they must take that exercise very seriously – Cybersecurity leaders must conduct adequate due diligence when selecting their MSSPs.

Our recent HFS Research Pulse 2022 survey highlighted that cybersecurity is the number one challenge that could adversely impact the strategic goals of an organization, before inflation, supply chain disruption and changing customer expectations. Not all MSSPs are born equal and enterpises must select the ones that are able to meet their unique requirements. CISOs and cybersecurity leaders must be on guard as the management of cybersecurity operations is too critical to be left to MSSPs that can’t effectively provide and evolve the cutting-edge technology and specialized expertise needed to tackle emerging threats (see our HFS Top 10: Cybersecurity Service Providers, 2022 for an in-depth assessment of leading cybersecurity services providers).

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