Which InfoSec Jobs Will Best Survive a Recession?

Is Infosec More Important Than Ever?
Now is definitely not the time to cut costs on security with an increasing number of threat actors trying to take advantage of the chaos amid the pandemic, says Grant McCracken, senior director of program and security operations at BugCrowd.

"Malicious or nefarious actors don't slow down just because there’s a recession. In fact, they become more active," he says. "In downturns, there may be a temptation by leadership to cut security budgets because the value of security can often be hard to see for those not familiar with the inner workings of a security team — which is to say it's easy to feel security is always excessive, that is, right up until it isn't."

"When a pandemic or crisis strike, attackers and bad actors always try to take advantage; therefore we expect an& increase in phishing attempts and other scams," adds David Stuart, senior director at social media security firm ZeroFOX. "Pile on economic calamity and forced remote working, and we may have the perfect storm of events leading to unprecedented opportunity for cybercriminals to profit. ith increasing threats and work process disruption, information security needs will likely increase. This will most likely translate to increased infosec skill demand, but it will also likely manifest as increased workloads for already burdened infosec teams."

And from the lessons learned during the massive shift to remote work, Laurence Pitt, global security strategy director at Juniper Networks, thinks security will not only remain as an essential part of business but be called on to help with future growth initiatives.

"In the coming months, we will see a lot of learning emerge from the current situation," Pitt says. "Not just the obvious of failed disaster recovery, or lack in remote access scaling, but also requirements for user behavior monitoring and analytics that will be introduced as users work with corporate devices on their home networks. The infosec team will be at the center of any new strategy discussions to look at how changes introduced today become corporate security strategy in the future."

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