Even before the current global pandemic, demand for cybersecurity professionals far outstripped supply. In Europe, there’s a shortage of 291,000 such professionals [1]. In the US, the situation is even starker, with a pre-COVID-19 skills gap of four million [2].

And the situation is about to get worse. Lockdown has forced companies to accelerate their digital transformation programmes – on average by six years [3]. In almost all areas of business, from e-commerce [4] to payments [5], to the sudden pivot to work from home [6], companies across the world are ditching the analogue and adopting the digital in more areas than ever before.

And whether they’re providing payments, e-commerce platforms, remote employee access, or something else entirely, all the companies making these changes – and the service providers who work for them – will need to secure their systems and their data. And that means even fiercer competition for cybersecurity pros and – if the industry doesn’t do something quickly – even more unfilled security roles. So what can the tech sector do to find more security pros right now?