Rewarding careers in cybersecurity

Ireland’s rapidly expanding cybersecurity sector offers a wide range of very rewarding career opportunities. “The market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 per cent,” says Kevin Buckley, senior high potential start-up adviser — cybersecurity with Enterprise Ireland. “That is translating into growth in jobs. We estimate that employment in the sector is growing at 10 per cent per annum. There are currently around 7,000 to 8,000 people working in the sector in Ireland and at this current trajectory, the industry will employ over 17,000 cybersecurity professionals by 2030.”

Many of these professionals are employed by fast-growing indigenous Irish companies. “We support new cybersecurity start-ups every year,” says Buckley. “We encourage them and provide early-stage and pre-seed funding as well as equity finance. Our 40 offices around the world help them to access global markets.”

Among the successful companies supported by Enterprise Ireland in recent years is Tines which offers software solutions to companies that use it to automate things like phishing responses without the need to write any code. “They have raised €100 million in equity funding over the past four years and now have 60 people working for them here in Ireland and another 60 in the US. Faultree’s solution enables the encryption of data while it is in use, and they have raised over €16 million in the past three years.”

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“There will always be career opportunities in the cybersecurity space for capable individuals passionate about keeping up with the latest tech trends and understanding their inherent risks,” says Dani Michaux, head of cybersecurity with KPMG.

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The range of roles available both in the specialist industry and employers in the big tech, banking and financial services, and professional services sectors is vast, according to Tracy Keevans, Global Foreign Direct Investment director with Morgan McKinley.

“The main areas for those considering a career in cyber security include penetration testing, threat management, vulnerability management, security operations, governance, risk and controls, IT risk and IT audit,” she says. “Entry-level positions include information security analyst and intelligence analysts while the more common senior opportunities include ethical hacker, threat evangelist, information security consultant, and head of governance risk control.”

Salary levels are very attractive, even at entry level. “A raw graduate with three to 12 months intern experience as part of their undergraduate degree can command between €40,000-€45,000 in today’s market,” says Keevans. “There is a sharp acceleration in salary levels for people with relatively little industry experience. Experience of just a year-and-a-half can move your salary to €55,000, an increase of more than 20 per cent. Hands-on security engineering talent tends to plateau in salary levels at between €80,000-€90,000 but can command between €120,000-€130,000 alongside lucrative stock options worth €80,000-€90,000 in big tech employers where the stakes and budgets are higher.”

Management posts

Top-level packages are also quite lucrative. “Security managers today are rarely earning less than six-figure salaries and the opportunities for senior C-Suite professionals have grown notably over the last three years,” she adds.

Access to the sector is relatively straightforward, according to Michaux. “There are lots of cybersecurity courses now across the country, ranging from shorter courses to full degrees. If you’re looking to move into cybersecurity from another field, it’s worth seeing if it’s possible to implement cybersecurity into your current role. The cyber security profession is quite diverse — we see colleagues with various educational backgrounds successfully transition into cyber security roles. Cybersecurity is just not all about coding and doesn’t necessarily require a coding background — we need people who have broader understanding of business issues, regulatory challenges, technology roadmaps and people behaviours. Having the curiosity to understand the ways cyberattacks work and have the analytics skills to look for patterns and behaviours is also [a] great asset. But as a whole — even broader knowledge when applied correctly can go a long way.”

Buckley also points to the apprenticeship programme run by Fit (Fastrack into Information Technology), the technology sector representative organisation committed to growing Ireland’s tech talent pipeline. “It suits school leavers and career changers,” he notes. “Apprentices work for companies and attend training and at the end of two years get a qualification. There is also a Level 8 programme honours degree run by UL. People can leave school to do an apprenticeship and then go on to the Level 8 programme and have an honours degree within five years. And they get paid while learning and training.”