Here’s How to Overcome the IT Skills Shortage in a Flash

July 16, 2021

Don’t Let the IT Skills Shortage Leave You Exposed to Danger!


Technology is an essential part of every business and keeping it rolling is a top priority. It became even more relevant during the global pandemic, but keeping that technology funstioning was a challenge as cybercriminals turned up the heat. Companies need to have the right personnel on hand to install, maintain and configure all of that technology and thanks to a worldwide IT skills shortage, that’s a problem.  In a recent CIO survey conducted by KPMG, executives in IT agreed overwhelmingly that the technology skills shortage is greater than it’s been since 2008, putting every business on notice that finding and retaining IT talent isn’t going to be easy. However, advances in technology through automation and AI can help alleviate some of the burdens. 


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The tech skills shortage has been a hot topic for years. That’s because it never seems to get any better. In fact, the problem has become so acute that 95% of executives in another recent survey said that instead of improving even incrementally, the skills shortage (and the subsequent hiring problems that it creates) have stayed the same or gotten worse over the past few years. Although they feel that they’ve consistently raised the alarm, almost 60% of respondents said they do not believe their organizations are taking it seriously or doing enough to alleviate pressure on their overburdened IT teams, leading to burnout and job-hopping – something no business can handle in this dangerous landscape.


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Finding Good Candidates is like Winning the Lottery

Unfortunately, even when a company is taking the problem seriously, there’s not a whole lot that they can do to find and keep good people. While 58% of hiring managers cite information security skills as their most desirable attribute, only a small number of tech workers have them. Transforming staffers into new specialists isn’t the answer either. Initially, it looks like a smart idea. More than 50% of companies in an IT management survey were confident that they could develop skilled cybersecurity workers with their own ranks.  But developing highly skilled IT workers within the ranks doesn’t make them any easier to retain than hiring them off the street. Almost 40% of hiring managers at companies that do manage to hire or develop the information security personnel admit that they are unable to retain them. 

The lack of candidates with specialized skills like data analysts, AI experts and cybersecurity specialists is especially acute, leaving companies struggling to catch up to technology.  According to recent reports, the global shortage in cybersecurity specialists surpassed 4 million last year, up from 2.93 million in 2019. Almost 40% of business executives cited both cybersecurity and AI as areas of their IT environment that had been severely negatively impacted by an inability to get the right people in place. In a rapidly shifting cybercrime landscape, that’s extremely dangerous.  

Research by the Forbes Technology Council shows the other side of this coin Employees are feeling undervalued and disgruntled by the lack of training and development that they’re experiencing as a result of too much work for too few hands, saying that only 34% of IT employers offer training and development support to help them develop new skills and advance their careers. That leaves 85% of IT professionals seeking training to improve their skills on their own time without any support at all,  and that makes these newly skilled workers dissatisfied with their employers and ready to jump ship at the first good opportunity. 


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Automation & AI Provide a Simple Solution to a Sticky Problem


The problem of the IT skills shortage is many-faceted, leaving companies in the lurch as cybercrime rates skyrocket – cybercrime was up by an estimated 85% across the board in 2020, with triple-digit increases in phishing (More than 600%) and ransomware (almost 150%) upping the danger ante. While this will continue to be a complex problem for the near future, there is one thing that companies can do right now to alleviate their internal IT skills shortage, and it will garner them immediate benefits. Investing in automation technology. These statistics show why executives are increasingly making AI-powered solutions and security automation a major priority 

  • In a survey about security automation, 68% of executives that were surveyed about the benefits of AI security said AI technology helped them optimize the value of their existing tools and personnel. 
  • Security automation can save more than 80% of the cost of manual security, a welcome benefit in a tough economy. 
  • More than 90% of business leaders say that automation is a must-have to manage large alert volumes with small IT teams.  
  • AI and security automation enabled organizations to respond to breaches nearly 30% faster than companies without security automation.  

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Add a Strong Defender to Your Team Fast


If you’re ready to put an expert that can protect you from sophisticated phishing attacks on your payroll, we’ve got good news for you. You don’t need to add to your headcount, you need Graphus. Powered by a smart AI our patented TrustGraph technology uses more than 50 individual data points to adjudicate an incoming email for trouble. It’s effective too. Graohus catches 40% more dangerous emails than competing traditional security solutions while generating fewer false-positive alerts. Plus, the smart Graphus AI never stops learning, analyzing your organizations’s unique communication patterns to quickly spot anomalies and zero day threats.

It also takes pressure off your existing IT team immediately. There’s no need to feed Graphus threat reports and it’s never waiting on threat intelligence to arrive in an update in order to refine your protection. Instead, Graphus learns on the job constantly as it protects your business, without fussy matintenance or tinkering, freeing up skilled tech staff for other things. It’s also ideally suited to painlessly support a hybrid workforce. Graphus also doesn’t add to anyone’s maintenance burden. There’s no need to constantly fuss with settings or updates and it seamlessly integrates with most popular email solutions.  

If you’re ready to start using smart technology like automation to improve working conditions for your IT staff while also improving your security, we’re ready to help. Contact the solutions experts at Graphus to get started. 


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