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How Much Cybersecurity Staff Is Important For Your Business?

Updated: Jan 15

Table of Contents -

  • Introduction

  • Evaluate Your Company’s Cybersecurity Needs

  • Calculate How Many Cybersecurity Staff You Need To Hire/Outsource

  • Having a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) For Your Board

  • Supporting Cybersecurity Staff


Employers in almost every sector now need and want to hire cybersecurity specialists more than ever. To protect an ever-expanding security perimeter, defend sensitive data and systems from malicious hackers, and adhere to strict regulatory requirements for data security and privacy, organizations need their skills.


A deep bench of IT security knowledge is increasingly important as businesses work to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and create a more automated, cloud-based, data-driven workplace that can support remote teams.


Businesses are under increased pressure due to the level of cybercrime to keep their systems updated, patch vulnerabilities, and quickly respond to and recover from cybersecurity incidents brought on by malware, ransomware, and phishing.


Before the pandemic, there was a gap between the demand for skilled cybersecurity talent and the pool of hiring-eligible candidates. This gap still exists. Companies still face competition from other companies looking for the same top candidates for crucial IT roles due to the ongoing cybersecurity skills gap. As a manager, you must be prepared to provide competitive pay, perks, and benefits in order to attract in-demand tech talent.


What kind of experts are required to cover every aspect of IT security? Here is a list of some positions that you can fill based on your needs, along with an overview of the typical roles and duties of a cybersecurity team.



Evaluate Your Company’s Cybersecurity Needs

This step goes without saying but we might as well just point this out. Nobody else other than you is a better judge of what all cybersecurity staff you can hire for your business and how much staff you would be requiring, Just like for any other department or any position, the first step begins with evaluating the need for a new resource. If you are building a cybersecurity team or hiring a few professionals, you can first analyze your security posture. You can do this by getting a penetration testing or vulnerability scanning service.


By assessing your company's security risks, whether they relate to developing software that must be secure, sharing data internally or remotely with employees, or adhering to security regulations for customer data. The size of your security team will need to be determined once you are aware of where your company's biggest security risks are.


Calculate How Many Cybersecurity Staff You Need To Hire or Outsource

How many information security employees does your team require? According to some research, you can hire 3 to 6 information security professionals for every 100 IT personnel. Although it is a little more complicated, this calculation can be used as a starting point. In other words, the calculation is based on the number of professionals you need to work on cybersecurity issues in relation to the number of dedicated IT staff you have, not the size of your company overall. Take a look at that ratio; it ought to serve as a starting point for the development of your security team.


Businesses should consider what kind of partnership they want when assessing security. To handle monitoring and alerts, do you need 1-2 full-time security personnel? a complete response unit? Would you rather have a remote team member who can collaborate with you or your management board?


Some of these questions can be resolved by assessing your company's security risks, after which you must determine the size of your security team needed to address them. You can scale up from there based on suggestions for where your company needs to focus once you've determined the size of your response team or have made a start on hiring someone to evaluate the problem.


Having a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) For Your Board

No matter their size or operational setting (government or business), the majority of organizations have a senior leader in charge of information security and cybersecurity. This position is frequently referred to as the director of information security or the chief information security officer (CISO).


The responsibilities of a CISO are -

  • Protect/Shield/Defend/Prevent. Assure that the staff, procedures, practices, and technologies of the organization proactively shield and defend the business against cyber threats and prevent the occurrence and repetition of cybersecurity incidents in accordance with the organization's risk tolerance.

  • Monitor/Hunt/Detect. Ascertain that the organization's personnel, policies, procedures, practices, and technologies keep an eye on ongoing operations, actively seek out and identify adversaries, and promptly report any suspicious or unauthorized activity.

  • Respond/Recover/Sustain. Reduce the effects of cybersecurity incidents and make sure that the organization's personnel, policies, procedures, practices, and technologies are swiftly deployed to get back to business as usual as soon as possible. Technologies, information, people, facilities, and supply chains are examples of assets.

  • Governance, management, compliance, education, and risk management. Ensure that all cybersecurity activities are continuously supervised, managed, evaluated for performance, and course-corrected using the organization's policies, procedures, practices, and technologies. This responsibility also entails mitigating risk in accordance with the organization's risk tolerance and ensuring compliance with all internal and external requirements.


Supporting Cybersecurity Staff

Once you have a security expert on your board or founding team, how do you go about creating a cybersecurity response team for your company? To create a cybersecurity team at your company, there are four organizational units that must answer to the CISO:


  • Program Management: governance, risk, and compliance; management of the workforce and suppliers; Situational awareness, ongoing monitoring, a security help desk, and computer incident response are all ways to communicate with the business security operations center.

  • High-impact incidents, planning for incident response, business continuity, and disaster recovery, tests, drills, and incident post-mortems are all examples of emergency operations and incident management. Investigations

  • Security engineering, identity and access management, applications security, host and network security, information asset security, and physical access control are all examples of asset security.


Cybersecurity Team Can Benefit Your Business

Together, the cybersecurity experts on the above list can assist your company in enhancing data, network, and system security; preventing cyberattacks and quickly recovering from them; meeting security compliance mandates; securing your remote workforce; modernizing and optimizing your company's IT security infrastructure; and creating more effective disaster recovery plans. These are just a few of the advantages that these experts can offer.


You might need to take hiring for all of these positions into consideration if your goal is to strengthen enterprise security. However, strengthening cybersecurity for midsize or small business operations may only necessitate a few strategic hires to complete the IT security function. Another way to secure IT expertise for your company is by hiring contract workers through a talent solutions company like www.ibovistaffing.com especially if you only require their specialized skills for a brief period of time.


Security is important in all areas of IT. Whatever other technology positions your company needs to fill, such as software developers, IT support managers, DevOps engineers, or other specialists, look for applicants who can contribute strong fundamental security knowledge and skills. Concentrate on hiring experts who will keep security at the forefront of everything they plan, create, and deliver for your company today and in the future.


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