Tech Cities Job Watch – who provide employers with an indicator of hiring, demand and salaries for IT jobs within the UK tech sector – have published their latest report showing that demand for new IT security skills has dropped by 5% in the past year – from the fourth quarter of 2016 to the fourth quarter of 2017.
The report shows that there was a 24% year-on-year increase in the demand for contractors but that this was overshadowed during the same period by a 10% decrease in demand for the larger market of permanent IT security staff. However, salaries increased by 4% - the average salary for an IT security role standing at £60,004 but still remaining much lower than that of a Big Data Specialist who can expect to earn £70,945.
Ten UK cities - London, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle upon Tyne - are developing reputations as technology cluster hubs and are set to face challenges as hacks and security breaches are getting more prevalent. Businesses could be vulnerable to more cyber attacks as budget cuts and the introduction of IR35 could create a disparity in the supply and remuneration in the industry.
The Director of Specialist Markets for Experis UK & Ireland, Martin Ewings, commented:
“These figures paint a complex picture of the cybersecurity landscape. While hacks are on the rise, the slowing demand for permanent IT security staff indicates that businesses are focusing on up-skilling current employees to ensure that they have the skills needed. The Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed the way that companies across every industry work; and cyber security is now everyone’s responsibility – not just the IT departments. From Web Development to Big Data and Mobile, businesses are conscious that IT Security needs to be factored into all digital projects from the start and employers are up-skilling their existing workforce in response. However, in what is being dubbed ‘the year of regulation’ and following several years dominated by major hacks and security breaches, businesses need to ensure that they are not resting on their laurels when it comes to keeping pace with the ever more sophisticated cyber threats they will face.”
He added:
“This trend is the result of a combination of different factors in the public and private sectors. On the one hand, businesses are plugging their short-term skills gap with more contractors but allocating them to lower value, higher volume security tasks; freeing up the permanent staff to focus on their more complex workload. But developments in the public sector are having an even bigger and long-lasting impact on the short-term market. Budget cuts and the introduction of IR35 have artificially forced down the market value of IT Security contractor day rates.”
And he concluded with:
“The complex architecture and high-profile nature of public sector work will always ensure the volume demand of IT Security contractor work, but the downward pressure on day-rates could see the supply of workers transition to permanent roles in the private sector – potentially leaving the public sector understaffed and vulnerable to attack. Many contractors are uniting in response to this, forming their own contractor businesses to work on a subscription-based model. If this trend continues, we could see these new players disrupt the traditional large enterprise outsourcers in 2018 and beyond.”
