Table of Contents
[toc headings="h2" title="Table of Contents"] The cybersecurity job market is highly competitive. The Cybersecurity Workforce Supply and Demand Report released by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) reports that there were between 480,000 and 570,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States alone in 2023, and that demand is only likely to grow in coming years. The challenge of finding talent only heightens for those who need security professionals with niche domain knowledge or specialized skills. One way organizations can sidestep the challenge of cybersecurity hiring is to retain the high-performing talent already on the team—and, while that’s not always easy either, there are some retention strategies that are consistently effective. If you’re struggling to figure out how to retain cybersecurity professionals in competitive job markets, keep reading for some tips and approaches that can help.
The costs of losing cybersecurity talent
Recruiting and training for any role can be expensive. Data from SHRM shows the average cost per hire was $4,700 in 2023 but those costs can go much higher for specialized positions in high demand, like cybersecurity. And that only includes the direct costs of recruitment, like job advertisements and recruitment fees. The actual cost is higher once you include indirect expenses like lost productivity or the salaries of HR team members. Losing cybersecurity talent often introduces other costs and risks for businesses, as well. Security professionals often have critical knowledge of the organization’s systems and processes, as well as knowledge of past security incidents and the response to them. The loss of that institutional knowledge can lead to gaps and oversights in your security efforts moving forward. This can lead to lapses in monitoring and maintaining digital security systems, while new employees may take some time to learn the specifics of your security environment. All of this can create new vulnerabilities and increase the risk of security breaches. It's also important to consider the impact of high turnover on the rest of the team. Other security personnel may see their workload grow to fill in those gaps, increasing the risk they’ll burn out and quit, too. Frequent resignations can also bring down morale across the team, or lead to uncertainty among clients and stakeholders about whether your systems are truly secure, making it harder to build a culture of trust and accountability around cybersecurity. The bottom line is that high cybersecurity turnover can be very detrimental to a business in multiple respects. It’s worth the effort for business leaders to learn how to keep cybersecurity employees happy and loyal. Even if there are short-term expenses associated with doing so, they will likely be less than the costs of losing talent in the long run.
Why cybersecurity professionals leave organizations (and how to prevent it)
Retaining cybersecurity talent in high-demand industries can be a major challenge, but one way to overcome it is to understand what factors tend to drive cybersecurity employee turnover. Correcting the issues that make professionals want to quit is the first step to creating an attractive work environment for cybersecurity experts. Here are five top causes of security talent turnover in organizations today.
Stress and burnout
Work-life balance in cybersecurity careers isn’t easy to achieve. The field is known for its relentless pace and demanding workloads. Not only do these professionals often work long hours, with the expectation to be on-call 24/7, but their role as the last line of defense against evolving digital threats gives these roles high stakes, with a perpetual sense of urgency that can lead to mental exhaustion and burnout. The challenges of attracting and retaining cybersecurity talent compound these problems. Security teams are often understaffed and may lack the budget they need to keep up with the growing complexity of threats. This can leave professionals working with outdated tools, or coping with a lack of resources and training, that adds more stress and frustration to their roles.
Poor support and leadership
Cybersecurity successes often go unnoticed. When the IT security team does their job, it means that attacks and breaches don’t happen—and that lack of an incident is rarely seen as cause for celebration. In contrast, security failures are highly visible and often come under intense scrutiny. When successes aren’t acknowledged but mistakes are highlighted, this results in low cybersecurity job satisfaction. This lack of recognition isn’t the only common issue in cybersecurity workforce management. The critical nature of their role makes it prone to micromanagement. Non-technical leaders who don’t fully understand the role often fail to provide sufficient support or provide the information and resources security teams need to do their jobs effectively, yet still hold the team to unrealistic expectations. The result is a toxic, high-stress work environment that makes building loyalty in cybersecurity staff impossible.
Lack of career growth
Working in cybersecurity requires deep expertise in specific technical domains, and it’s common for professionals to specialize in an area like penetration testing, digital forensics, compliance, or threat analysis. While this is necessary to address complex security needs, it also limits the options for security analyst career development. This forces professionals to look outside their organization to avoid career stagnation, especially since many organizations have relatively flat security hierarchies, with no clear pathway to progress from technical roles to leadership positions. Part of the issue here is the nature of cybersecurity work. As a largely reactive field, security professionals spend much of their time responding to incidents and mitigating risks, leaving little room to pursue strategic projects or leadership opportunities. A lack of investment in upskilling staff leaves them unprepared to take on the few leadership roles that are available.
Poor work environment
The high-stakes, always-on nature of the work mentioned above makes creating a cybersecurity-friendly work culture difficult, and there are often other issues with the work environment for security professionals, aside from the concerns over work-life balance in cybersecurity roles. Often, these teams are isolated from other departments and not fully integrated into the broader organizational strategies. This siloing can prevent them from feeling like part of the team. Add in the frequent lack of recognition and it’s easy to see how this can erode morale, leaving security professionals feeling undervalued and like they lack a voice in the workplace conversation.
Competition from other employers
The job market for security professionals is competitive, and that demand isn’t likely to ease any time soon, based on the current trends in cybersecurity recruitment and retention and the ongoing cybersecurity skills shortage. Organizations that have the resources to do so will often pay a premium to land the top talent in the industry, along with offering other perks like remote work, scheduling flexibility, or professional development that are designed to attract and retain cybersecurity professionals. Smaller organizations often lack the budget or leadership buy-in to offer competitive cybersecurity salaries, and their IT security staff retention suffers as a result.
Best practices for retaining experienced cybersecurity employees
The best strategies for keeping top-performing IT and cybersecurity talent are those that address the pain points outlined in the section above. Employee retention strategies tailored for cybersecurity teams often require a multi-faceted approach. This can include policies for preventing burnout in cybersecurity teams, implementing career advancement programs for cybersecurity professionals, and developing more robust cybersecurity compensation packages. Let’s take a closer look at seven key areas organizations should address to improve employee retention in cybersecurity.
1. Offer competitive compensation.
The first step to creating competitive compensation packages is learning exactly what “competitive” means in the context of cybersecurity. There are a variety of resources employers can use to research the current industry standards. These include salary surveys from organizations like Glassdoor, Mercer, and Payscale, as well as studies and reports released by professional organizations like ISC2, ISACA, and the SANS Institute. You can also review job postings for similar roles at competing organizations or partner with staffing agencies to get access to their tech recruitment insights. Once you’ve completed that research, you can analyze your current compensation structure and compare your findings. Bear in mind that base salary rates aren’t the only factor at play. Tailored benefits packages for retaining cybersecurity talent often include other forms of compensation like retention bonuses, performance-based bonuses, equity and stock options, retirement contributions, comprehensive health insurance, and reimbursement for certifications and training.
2. Provide flexibility.
Burnout is a significant impediment to cybersecurity talent retention. Helping your team members to prevent it is one of the best ways to reduce turnover rates among cybersecurity professionals, and workplace flexibility can go a long way in that regard. Offering remote cybersecurity work is one way to approach this. You can also offer flexible hours to make up for the demands of after-hours incident response duties, and provide additional time off to security team members after incidents or other situations where they had to put in extra hours. The size of your staff is a factor here, too. When the security department is understaffed, this leaves employees overwhelmed with work and feeling like they can’t take a break, exacerbating the already high-stress nature of the position. Because of this, your retention strategy may start by expanding your cybersecurity team to ensure you have enough staff to implement on-call rotation schedules and reduce always-on demands.
3. Foster a positive work environment.
A positive culture is one of the top reasons cybersecurity experts stay with their employers. If you’re wondering how to build loyalty among your cybersecurity workforce, fostering a more collaborative security culture is a good place to start. Keep communication channels open between employees and leadership, providing ways for team members to share feedback or have their concerns heard. It also helps to break down silos between the security team and other departments, opening up opportunities for knowledge sharing and encouraging stronger personal connections and trust bonds across your team. Along with these adjustments to the culture, mental health resources are among the best employee benefits for security professionals. This can include options like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), stress management workshops, peer support groups, wellness portals with digital stress management tools, or direct access to therapists or counselors via on-site clinics or virtual counseling services.
4. Provide ongoing learning and development opportunities.
Options for career development in tech roles is one of the benefits cybersecurity professionals value most in an employer. This can foster engagement and retention in cybersecurity roles because it demonstrates a commitment to employees’ professional growth, enhancing their job satisfaction and feelings of loyalty to the organization. There are a few ways employers can support security professional career development. One option is to cover the cost of IT security training and certification programs, or to provide tuition reimbursement or repayment assistance for those who pursue degrees in related fields. This is often a win-win, ensuring your team has the latest skills and knowledge while helping them bolster their resumes and maintain their ongoing development. Along with this kind of technical skill development, providing leadership development and mentorship can help to broaden security professionals’ skills, preparing them for management roles and broadening their understanding of the business and how their work relates to it. Finally, consider ways you can help team members stay connected to the security community at large. This could mean paying for their membership in organizations like IAPP, ISACA, or ISC2, or covering the cost to attend conferences like DEF CON, Black Hat, or the RSA Conference.
5. Outline a clear career path.
Another effective way to motivate and retain cybersecurity staff is to give them a clear path to advance their career. This is often easier for enterprise security positions, where the large size of the organization often means more options for middle management or senior technical roles. In smaller companies with flatter hierarchies, it may mean creating specialized roles or job titles that reflect the individual's seniority and experience. Whatever the size of your organization, make sure you establish transparent promotion criteria and define advancement tracks for both the technical and the managerial side of the profession. This gives employees a roadmap to follow so they don’t feel stuck or stagnant in their role. Along with this, make sure security team members are given opportunities to lead teams or projects when they’re ready to do so, and give them access to cross-functional assignments that can make them more visible to leadership and build their reputation within the company.
6. Give security team members autonomy and authority.
Empowering security workers with autonomy and authority fosters a sense of ownership, enhancing their engagement with the work, making this one of the top tech talent retention strategies, particularly when used in conjunction with the career pathing mentioned above. This starts by adjusting your approach to information security talent management. Autonomy grows when employees feel trusted to handle tasks without constant oversight. Train managers in strategies to avoid micromanagement and delegate some authority to security teams. This can include letting them independently assess and respond to lower-level alerts, or letting them make routine updates, patches, or configuration changes without needing higher authority. As an added bonus, giving this kind of authority to team members can reduce bottlenecks and enable the team to respond more quickly in time-sensitive situations. Along with this, look for ways you can include security team members in higher-level planning regarding risk management or the overall cybersecurity strategy. Seek out their input when investing in new security tools or training initiatives, and give them end-to-end responsibility over projects that are solely within the security domain, like conducting penetration tests or leading post-incident reviews.
7. Recognize and reward strong security performance.
Employee recognition is an effective way to keep team members happy in any area of a business, but it’s particularly critical when it comes to security operations center staffing. A strong recognition program can go a long way to making these high-stress roles more sustainable in the long term by acknowledging their hard work and expertise. Make a point of highlighting security team achievements, as well as accomplishments from individual employees, across the company in whole team meetings or company update newsletters. While this kind of public acknowledgment boosts morale and fosters pride in their work, it’s also smart to enhance this with more tangible rewards for significant accomplishments. For example, you can offer bonuses for meeting project milestones, or provide additional PTO for team members who put in overtime to successfully mitigate a threat. One of the issues cybersecurity professionals face is that their work is often invisible. Company leaders can address this by acknowledging behind-the-scenes efforts that often go unrecognized, like stopping an attack before it can escalate or improving the security workflow to enable a faster response to incidents. Utilize a mix of team-based and individual rewards to promote a culture that is both collaborative and makes every employee feel supported and valued.
The bottom line on cybersecurity retention
While retaining cybersecurity talent isn’t always easy, it’s also deceptively simple: create an environment where people want to work, and show team members you value their skills through recognition and competitive compensation. The key is to understand what this in-demand talent wants from an employer and making adjustments to meet those needs. For any employer who is struggling to keep security talent on their team, following the advice outlined in this article can help.
The cybersecurity job market is highly competitive. The Cybersecurity Workforce Supply and Demand Report released by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) reports that there were between 480,000 and 570,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States alone in 2023, and that demand is only likely to grow in coming years. The challenge of finding talent only heightens for those who need security professionals with niche domain knowledge or specialized skills.
One way organizations can sidestep the challenge of cybersecurity hiring is to retain the high-performing talent already on the team—and, while that’s not always easy either, there are some retention strategies that are consistently effective. If you’re struggling to figure out how to retain cybersecurity professionals in competitive job markets, keep reading for some tips and approaches that can help.
The costs of losing cybersecurity talent
Recruiting and training for any role can be expensive. Data from SHRM shows the average cost per hire was $4,700 in 2023 but those costs can go much higher for specialized positions in high demand, like cybersecurity. And that only includes the direct costs of recruitment, like job advertisements and recruitment fees. The actual cost is higher once you include indirect expenses like lost productivity or the salaries of HR team members.
Losing cybersecurity talent often introduces other costs and risks for businesses, as well. Security professionals often have critical knowledge of the organization’s systems and processes, as well as knowledge of past security incidents and the response to them. The loss of that institutional knowledge can lead to gaps and oversights in your security efforts moving forward. This can lead to lapses in monitoring and maintaining digital security systems, while new employees may take some time to learn the specifics of your security environment. All of this can create new vulnerabilities and increase the risk of security breaches.
It’s also important to consider the impact of high turnover on the rest of the team. Other security personnel may see their workload grow to fill in those gaps, increasing the risk they’ll burn out and quit, too. Frequent resignations can also bring down morale across the team, or lead to uncertainty among clients and stakeholders about whether your systems are truly secure, making it harder to build a culture of trust and accountability around cybersecurity.
The bottom line is that high cybersecurity turnover can be very detrimental to a business in multiple respects. It’s worth the effort for business leaders to learn how to keep cybersecurity employees happy and loyal. Even if there are short-term expenses associated with doing so, they will likely be less than the costs of losing talent in the long run.
Why cybersecurity professionals leave organizations (and how to prevent it)
Retaining cybersecurity talent in high-demand industries can be a major challenge, but one way to overcome it is to understand what factors tend to drive cybersecurity employee turnover. Correcting the issues that make professionals want to quit is the first step to creating an attractive work environment for cybersecurity experts. Here are five top causes of security talent turnover in organizations today.
Stress and burnout
Work-life balance in cybersecurity careers isn’t easy to achieve. The field is known for its relentless pace and demanding workloads. Not only do these professionals often work long hours, with the expectation to be on-call 24/7, but their role as the last line of defense against evolving digital threats gives these roles high stakes, with a perpetual sense of urgency that can lead to mental exhaustion and burnout.
The challenges of attracting and retaining cybersecurity talent compound these problems. Security teams are often understaffed and may lack the budget they need to keep up with the growing complexity of threats. This can leave professionals working with outdated tools, or coping with a lack of resources and training, that adds more stress and frustration to their roles.
Poor support and leadership
Cybersecurity successes often go unnoticed. When the IT security team does their job, it means that attacks and breaches don’t happen—and that lack of an incident is rarely seen as cause for celebration. In contrast, security failures are highly visible and often come under intense scrutiny. When successes aren’t acknowledged but mistakes are highlighted, this results in low cybersecurity job satisfaction.
This lack of recognition isn’t the only common issue in cybersecurity workforce management. The critical nature of their role makes it prone to micromanagement. Non-technical leaders who don’t fully understand the role often fail to provide sufficient support or provide the information and resources security teams need to do their jobs effectively, yet still hold the team to unrealistic expectations. The result is a toxic, high-stress work environment that makes building loyalty in cybersecurity staff impossible.
Lack of career growth
Working in cybersecurity requires deep expertise in specific technical domains, and it’s common for professionals to specialize in an area like penetration testing, digital forensics, compliance, or threat analysis. While this is necessary to address complex security needs, it also limits the options for security analyst career development. This forces professionals to look outside their organization to avoid career stagnation, especially since many organizations have relatively flat security hierarchies, with no clear pathway to progress from technical roles to leadership positions.
Part of the issue here is the nature of cybersecurity work. As a largely reactive field, security professionals spend much of their time responding to incidents and mitigating risks, leaving little room to pursue strategic projects or leadership opportunities. A lack of investment in upskilling staff leaves them unprepared to take on the few leadership roles that are available.
Poor work environment
The high-stakes, always-on nature of the work mentioned above makes creating a cybersecurity-friendly work culture difficult, and there are often other issues with the work environment for security professionals, aside from the concerns over work-life balance in cybersecurity roles. Often, these teams are isolated from other departments and not fully integrated into the broader organizational strategies. This siloing can prevent them from feeling like part of the team. Add in the frequent lack of recognition and it’s easy to see how this can erode morale, leaving security professionals feeling undervalued and like they lack a voice in the workplace conversation.
Competition from other employers
The job market for security professionals is competitive, and that demand isn’t likely to ease any time soon, based on the current trends in cybersecurity recruitment and retention and the ongoing cybersecurity skills shortage. Organizations that have the resources to do so will often pay a premium to land the top talent in the industry, along with offering other perks like remote work, scheduling flexibility, or professional development that are designed to attract and retain cybersecurity professionals. Smaller organizations often lack the budget or leadership buy-in to offer competitive cybersecurity salaries, and their IT security staff retention suffers as a result.
Best practices for retaining experienced cybersecurity employees
The best strategies for keeping top-performing IT and cybersecurity talent are those that address the pain points outlined in the section above. Employee retention strategies tailored for cybersecurity teams often require a multi-faceted approach. This can include policies for preventing burnout in cybersecurity teams, implementing career advancement programs for cybersecurity professionals, and developing more robust cybersecurity compensation packages. Let’s take a closer look at seven key areas organizations should address to improve employee retention in cybersecurity.
1. Offer competitive compensation.
The first step to creating competitive compensation packages is learning exactly what “competitive” means in the context of cybersecurity. There are a variety of resources employers can use to research the current industry standards. These include salary surveys from organizations like Glassdoor, Mercer, and Payscale, as well as studies and reports released by professional organizations like ISC2, ISACA, and the SANS Institute. You can also review job postings for similar roles at competing organizations or partner with staffing agencies to get access to their tech recruitment insights.
Once you’ve completed that research, you can analyze your current compensation structure and compare your findings. Bear in mind that base salary rates aren’t the only factor at play. Tailored benefits packages for retaining cybersecurity talent often include other forms of compensation like retention bonuses, performance-based bonuses, equity and stock options, retirement contributions, comprehensive health insurance, and reimbursement for certifications and training.
2. Provide flexibility.
Burnout is a significant impediment to cybersecurity talent retention. Helping your team members to prevent it is one of the best ways to reduce turnover rates among cybersecurity professionals, and workplace flexibility can go a long way in that regard.
Offering remote cybersecurity work is one way to approach this. You can also offer flexible hours to make up for the demands of after-hours incident response duties, and provide additional time off to security team members after incidents or other situations where they had to put in extra hours.
The size of your staff is a factor here, too. When the security department is understaffed, this leaves employees overwhelmed with work and feeling like they can’t take a break, exacerbating the already high-stress nature of the position. Because of this, your retention strategy may start by expanding your cybersecurity team to ensure you have enough staff to implement on-call rotation schedules and reduce always-on demands.
3. Foster a positive work environment.
A positive culture is one of the top reasons cybersecurity experts stay with their employers. If you’re wondering how to build loyalty among your cybersecurity workforce, fostering a more collaborative security culture is a good place to start. Keep communication channels open between employees and leadership, providing ways for team members to share feedback or have their concerns heard. It also helps to break down silos between the security team and other departments, opening up opportunities for knowledge sharing and encouraging stronger personal connections and trust bonds across your team.
Along with these adjustments to the culture, mental health resources are among the best employee benefits for security professionals. This can include options like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), stress management workshops, peer support groups, wellness portals with digital stress management tools, or direct access to therapists or counselors via on-site clinics or virtual counseling services.
4. Provide ongoing learning and development opportunities.
Options for career development in tech roles is one of the benefits cybersecurity professionals value most in an employer. This can foster engagement and retention in cybersecurity roles because it demonstrates a commitment to employees’ professional growth, enhancing their job satisfaction and feelings of loyalty to the organization.
There are a few ways employers can support security professional career development. One option is to cover the cost of IT security training and certification programs, or to provide tuition reimbursement or repayment assistance for those who pursue degrees in related fields. This is often a win-win, ensuring your team has the latest skills and knowledge while helping them bolster their resumes and maintain their ongoing development.
Along with this kind of technical skill development, providing leadership development and mentorship can help to broaden security professionals’ skills, preparing them for management roles and broadening their understanding of the business and how their work relates to it. Finally, consider ways you can help team members stay connected to the security community at large. This could mean paying for their membership in organizations like IAPP, ISACA, or ISC2, or covering the cost to attend conferences like DEF CON, Black Hat, or the RSA Conference.
5. Outline a clear career path.
Another effective way to motivate and retain cybersecurity staff is to give them a clear path to advance their career. This is often easier for enterprise security positions, where the large size of the organization often means more options for middle management or senior technical roles. In smaller companies with flatter hierarchies, it may mean creating specialized roles or job titles that reflect the individual’s seniority and experience.
Whatever the size of your organization, make sure you establish transparent promotion criteria and define advancement tracks for both the technical and the managerial side of the profession. This gives employees a roadmap to follow so they don’t feel stuck or stagnant in their role. Along with this, make sure security team members are given opportunities to lead teams or projects when they’re ready to do so, and give them access to cross-functional assignments that can make them more visible to leadership and build their reputation within the company.
6. Give security team members autonomy and authority.
Empowering security workers with autonomy and authority fosters a sense of ownership, enhancing their engagement with the work, making this one of the top tech talent retention strategies, particularly when used in conjunction with the career pathing mentioned above.
This starts by adjusting your approach to information security talent management. Autonomy grows when employees feel trusted to handle tasks without constant oversight. Train managers in strategies to avoid micromanagement and delegate some authority to security teams. This can include letting them independently assess and respond to lower-level alerts, or letting them make routine updates, patches, or configuration changes without needing higher authority. As an added bonus, giving this kind of authority to team members can reduce bottlenecks and enable the team to respond more quickly in time-sensitive situations.
Along with this, look for ways you can include security team members in higher-level planning regarding risk management or the overall cybersecurity strategy. Seek out their input when investing in new security tools or training initiatives, and give them end-to-end responsibility over projects that are solely within the security domain, like conducting penetration tests or leading post-incident reviews.
7. Recognize and reward strong security performance.
Employee recognition is an effective way to keep team members happy in any area of a business, but it’s particularly critical when it comes to security operations center staffing. A strong recognition program can go a long way to making these high-stress roles more sustainable in the long term by acknowledging their hard work and expertise.
Make a point of highlighting security team achievements, as well as accomplishments from individual employees, across the company in whole team meetings or company update newsletters. While this kind of public acknowledgment boosts morale and fosters pride in their work, it’s also smart to enhance this with more tangible rewards for significant accomplishments. For example, you can offer bonuses for meeting project milestones, or provide additional PTO for team members who put in overtime to successfully mitigate a threat.
One of the issues cybersecurity professionals face is that their work is often invisible. Company leaders can address this by acknowledging behind-the-scenes efforts that often go unrecognized, like stopping an attack before it can escalate or improving the security workflow to enable a faster response to incidents. Utilize a mix of team-based and individual rewards to promote a culture that is both collaborative and makes every employee feel supported and valued.
The bottom line on cybersecurity retention
While retaining cybersecurity talent isn’t always easy, it’s also deceptively simple: create an environment where people want to work, and show team members you value their skills through recognition and competitive compensation. The key is to understand what this in-demand talent wants from an employer and making adjustments to meet those needs. For any employer who is struggling to keep security talent on their team, following the advice outlined in this article can help.