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IT salary not enough? Want to make £10,000 a DAY?

Time to call yourself a cybersecurity expert

Cybersecurity experts are currently billing desperate companies £10,000 a day – yes, a DAY – according to recruiters Manpower.

The company said on Tuesday that there is a "booming business and finance sector" in the UK looking for talent, noting that the high-profile hacks at Sony and TalkTalk have "created a surge in demand for cybersecurity experts."

The information stems from a survey the company carried out with over 2,000 UK employers, in which it asked them whether they intended to hire additional workers or reduce the size of their workforce in the coming quarter.

Manpower then editorialized a little when it noted that it has seen a "record number of requests received for specialists with IT security expertise in 2015, four times the demand that it saw last year." And thanks to a limited supply, they are now able to charge eye-watering daily fees.

"Some individuals can command daily rates in excess of £3,000, and some top cyber-security specialists can even earn five-figure sums daily," according to Manpower – saying this is something that is set to continue for the foreseeable future.

"With the potential risk to companies so significant and no signs of demand falling, those sky-high salaries look set to continue."

MD Mark Cahill, belabored the point: "There are millions of cyber attacks every day, with a total cost to the global economy of up to $575 billion a year.

"Companies are having to invest heavily to protect themselves and they now believe that cyber breaches are inevitable, with their focus moving to responding to attacks rather than just prevention. We expect the biggest growth area next year to be in 'cyber security crisis management,' with large organisations bolstering their own in-house security teams as well as calling on specialist contractors."

Okay, we get it: Manpower is getting lots of requests for cybersecurity people and it doesn't have enough people so it is waving around a huge wad of cash to entice you.

Of course, it's still a huge wad of cash... Might be worth brushing up on some skills and updating that CV over the holidays. ®

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