Supply shortage leads to higher salaries for cybersecurity professionals

The companies’ co-led digital transformation journey has been further emphasized following the imminent launch of 5G services.

Siva Prasad N., sales director of HR services firm Teamlease Digital, said the average salary of a cybersecurity analyst has increased by 37-40% in India since August last year. “An early stage cybersecurity analyst with at least four years of experience is 7.5 lakh per year right now. A senior analyst, with decades of experience, earns approx The average is 220,000,” he added.

Cybersecurity analysts provide consulting services to a company based on vulnerability reports from around the world. Unlike security researchers, who find bugs in programs and often fix them, analysts are considered to play an entry-level role.

Experts say the increase in average wages is part of an effort to close the supply-demand gap. Data taken from human resources platform Quess Corp shows employment has increased by 113% over the past year, especially serving the banking, financial services and insurance sectors, with an increase of 4.8 time.

Despite the best efforts of the industry, security professionals are not willing to join Indian companies due to unfavorable working conditions and lower wages. Skilled hackers often build their own portfolios and make a lot of money from freelance work.

For example, Dhiraj Mishra, a security researcher took on a full-time role of security analyst at an investment bank in the UAE two years ago. Besides, he pursues independent projects. “It helps me maintain a balance between my corporate role and my independent security profession,” he says.

The co-founder of an unnamed security firm said the one-time payout for a bug bounty program can be significantly higher than the annual salary of a 9- to 5-year-old job. Companies including Apple and Microsoft, pay millions of dollars to hackers for pointing out flaws in their software, and Indian ethical hackers have been topping the charts for years.

For example, VPN service company AtlasVPN says Indian hackers fooled 35 crore between May 2019 and April 2020. Last year, security researcher Aman Pandey was one of the lead researchers for the Google Vulnerability Rewards Program, the Google Vulnerability Program. bug bounty run by the search giant.

This person said his company has 90 vacancies that have not been filled in the past 4 months, despite offering much higher salaries. Prasad says more than 70,000 cybersecurity jobs are vacant in India. The remaining professionals, according to industry executives, are not skilled enough.

“One of the key issues is that while cyber threats and even security tools have evolved at a sophisticated level,” said Vijendra Katiyar, country director, India and SAARC at US- en, experts were not able to improve their own skills at the same rate. based cybersecurity company, Trend Micro.

Industry experts say that the demand for such professionals will only increase in the future as 5G services roll out, followed by smart factories, digitized store floors, etc. Clifton Menezes, executive vice president of India Head Group Portfolio at Capgemini, said that the increase in demand for increasingly sophisticated security professionals could be related to “the increasing use of smart sensors , mobile solutions, connected devices or robots in store floors”.

Yogesh Zope, chief information officer and chief digital officer at manufacturing services firm Bharat Forge, said that while 5G will help “create new revenue streams”, such streams will also increase the risk. threatened. “As more and more sensor-based devices are added to the network, hackers will be able to use a compromised device to infect other devices on the internal network,” added Zope.

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