CyberVoices

This quarterly report explores the opportunities and the employment trends in cybersecurity in Canada. Canadian Cybersecurity Jobs is part of the Canadian Cybersecurity Network, Canada’s largest cybersecurity member network with over 31,000 active members. Canadian Cybersecurity Jobs is Canada’s only dedicated cybersecurity job portal.

Note: The data below, reflects what is taking place from a Canadian cybersecurity job opportunity perspective in Canada, based on the data that we have. It is there to demonstrate trends, patterns and to provide some level of guidance to individuals and organizations, where this data may be helpful. It is a picture in time and should be considered with other similar industry data. Over the coming quarters, we will continue to analyze the data, in more detail and share any trends, we see happening.

Now to some of the data:

In September there were 710 open cybersecurity job opportunities on Canadian Cybersecurity Jobs. A significant drop of over 19% from late spring. This can be attributed to the continued cost constraints, brought on by tougher economic and higher interest rates impacting, the Canadian economy. The Canadian Cybersecurity Network has seen the impact on its members with employee reductions or rationalizations in some companies. The impact has been small compared to the impacts on other technology industry participants. With the economic impacts, came a belt tightening across most cybersecurity departments and organizations as well as some job hiring freezes.

September normally has a job posting upswing, but so far, it’s been moderate although the cybersecurity job market is still very healthy. Smaller companies are being very careful with capital expenditures as mergers and consolidations take place, and cybersecurity customers look to more integrated vendor solution sets to reduce their own costs.

The breakdown by job category of the 710 posted roles was:

• 31% Information Security roles
• 27% Cybersecurity Engineering
• 15% Sales/Sales Operations & Marketing
• 10% Legal/Privacy
• 2%    Executive roles
• 1%   Cybersecurity Education
• 14% Other
  
  

The most interesting category is the significant rise in legal and privacy roles across the country as corporations and organizations of all sizes adapt to new legal and policy environments. This is a very important area for governments to explore and help small medium businesses who struggle with the extra complexity and costs in this area.

Location wise, there has not been much change, with over 40% of roles originating out of Ontario, with Toronto, Ottawa and Waterloo leading the way. Next is Quebec with approximately 22% of all posted roles and then British Columbia with 14% and Alberta with 6%.

One statistic to continue to explore over the coming quarters is the percentage or lack of executive roles. Like all other tech industries in Canada, executive roles tend to be a low percentage of the overall workforce requirements, as larger mostly US companies, continue to leverage Canada for research and development skills as compared to senior leadership roles which continue in most cases to originate out of the US or elsewhere on the global scene Increasing the percentage of executive roles in cybersecurity in Canada tends to go hand in hand with how our country is doing on a leadership level and how stable the industry can be in times of turmoil.

Next quarterly analysis is expected in mid-January. For further information about this cybersecurity job data analysis, please contact us