Cybersecurity Certifications and Their Role in Staff Retention

The Great Resignation is well underway. In November 2021 alone, more than 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in search of opportunities with greater growth potential and new career paths. For the cybersecurity market — already facing a significant skills deficit — this ongoing resignation has created even more opportunities for talented staff. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), roles such as information security analysts are now on track for much faster than average growth with a predicted increase of 33 percent in available positions over the next 10 years.

As a result, companies can’t afford to lose the cybersecurity talent they have. In practice, however, it’s not enough to simply pay more: Data from a recent Gallup poll found that it takes a pay increase of 20 percent or more to poach workers who are engaged and active in their workplace. The opposite is also true. If staff aren’t engaged with current work and don’t feel like there’s any room for advancement, they’ll take jobs for less pay that offer the opportunity for improvement.

The Impacts of Low Engagement

Staff that aren’t engaged still do their jobs — but don’t go out of their way to go the extra mile. In many areas of business operations, this lack of engagement leads to less-than-stellar results and may drive resignations.

In the ever-changing world of cybersecurity, however, absent engagement can also lead to substantive risk. Here’s why: While going through the motions by monitoring alerts, drafting reports, and checking tools for evidence of incursion or compromise can help keep companies safe from familiar threats such as business email compromise (BEC) and simple malware payloads, it’s not enough to defend against evolving attack approaches.

Think of it like this — in the same way that security professionals regularly refresh and enhance their skills to stay current, so do attackers. Consider the shift away from in-office work. While the initial transition caught even experienced hackers off guard, they quickly adapted. By early 2021, they were rolling out COVID-themed attack campaigns designed to leverage public sentiment.

Attackers are adapting to make the most of current conditions. If cybersecurity staff aren’t given the same opportunity, companies face a double challenge: Without the skills and knowledge to address emerging threats, staff can’t effectively defend corporate networks. And without access to the courses and certifications that could help them address these attacks, staff members can feel dissatisfied.

The Role of Certifications in Staff Satisfaction

Certifications offer a dual benefit for staff: The right qualifications make it easier for them to do their job, and support from managers and the C-suite for ongoing skills improvement makes them feel valued. Staff are therefore more likely to stick around.

Consider that 80 percent of security professionals already feel inadequately prepared to defend their organization, and 68 percent say they don’t have the right training to get the job done. By offering full support for certified skill-building, companies can both demonstrate a commitment to staff growth and boost overall cybersecurity simultaneously.

With so many courses and qualifications now available, however, businesses are best served by a functional framework capable of pinpointing potential skills gaps and providing staff with the training they need to succeed.

This is the role of solutions like Cybrary for Teams. With tailored assessments to pinpoint skills gaps and learning paths curated by cybersecurity experts, Teams can help your business create a plan to skill up teams that offers benefits for employee retention, incident response, and issue remediation.

The numbers tell the tale: 69 percent of industry professionals say it’s difficult to retain cybersecurity talent. But with over 300 instructor-led courses, 500 hands-on virtual labs, 200 certification practice tests, and 200 targeted skill assessments that encompass industry-leading providers such as AWS, Google, Azure, Cisco, Oracle, and Splunk, Cybrary for Teams lets you create a roadmap for security success and empowers cybersecurity staff to streamline skills building.

Certifiably Confident

For organizations looking to retain top cybersecurity talent, certifications are a great starting point. While they’re not enough in isolation — companies must also create work environments that support staff goals and foster a culture of engagement — access to industry-leading cybersecurity courses and certifications offer a sense of growth and purpose.

Put simply, staff who are supported by management to learn as much as they can about cybersecurity and who can easily find and enroll in the courses they’re curious about are more likely to stick around and see where their career path takes them.

The Great Resignation is underway — and shows no signs of slowing. Make improved retention a reality by engaging staff with the tools, technology and training they need to excel in cybersecurity efforts.

Scale and manage cybersecurity certification prep across your entire organization with Cybrary. Whether you’re trying to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, bolster your team’s credibility, or comply with regulations, ensuring employees earn and maintain industry certifications is critical. Trade expensive, time-intensive boot camps and in-person training for an online platform that fits any budget and schedule. Cybrary offers a step-by-step certification prep experience with on-demand tools and resources to help your team focus, prepare for, and earn CEUs to maintain industry certifications all in one place. Check it out here.