Job vacancies in UK cybersecurity are growing at a rate of 10-12% per year, with recruitment professionals struggling to find skilled candidate to fill roles.

At any one time on the current job market there are around 17,000 live cybersecurity roles, according to analysis by Robert Walters.

The recruitment firm also predicted that UK vacancies will continue to grow at the same rate in the coming years, only increasing the strain on the cybersecurity workforce gap.

The analysis revealed that the most in-demand roles within cybersecurity were cloud security engineers, security operations centre analysts, penetration testers and ethical hackers, cyber risk and compliance specialists, and AI and threat intelligence analysts.

Robert Walters noted that as cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated and increase in scale, the need for cyber experts has intensified across industries.

Professionals often struggle to keep pace with the need for new skills, making it even harder to hire appropriate talent.

Unsurprisingly, the recruitment firm predicted that the retail industry would make more efforts in cybersecurity recruitment considering the high-impact attacks against major UK retailers like M&S, Co-op, and Harrods.

Retail currently makes up about 10% of all cybersecurity vacancies, the fifth highest sector in the UK.

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Finance and banking took the top spot, with 3400 vacancies making up a fifth of all open roles.

This was followed by the public sector and defence (18%), technology and digital services (16%), and healthcare and life sciences (12%).

“Many retailers rank among the top employers of cybersecurity talent and consistently allocate substantial resources towards enhancing their security systems. However, following these high-profile attacks, we anticipate that budgets will be stretched even further this year,” Phill Brown, global head of market intelligence at Robert Walters said.

“This latest situation serves as a cautionary tale for all businesses. By hiring the right professionals and consistently investing in their upskilling from the beginning, companies can better protect themselves against ever-evolving cyber threats.”