ISACA discovers cyber skills gap affecting data privacy practice

According to an ISACA study marking the annual Data Privacy Day cyber supplier marketing opportunity, thousands of technical privacy roles are going unfilled all over the world, leaving organisations dangerously exposed to breaches of compliance laws and cyber security incidents.

It found that 46% of organisations find themselves struggling to fill legal and compliance roles, and 55% technical privacy roles. 41% reported that the biggest challenge in forming an organisational privacy plan was a lack of competent resources.

Respondents expected that privacy professionals would be in much greater demand in 2022, with 67% anticipating a need for legal and compliance pros, and 72% anticipating a need for technical privacy pros.

When seeking privacy pros, respondents highlighted compliance and legal experience, prior experience in a privacy role, and technical experience as the key requisites, but they also reported that many candidates lacked these skills.

Safia Kazi, Privacy Professional Practice Advisor at ISACA said, “People are an essential component of any privacy program, both the privacy professionals driving the work forward and employees across the enterprise who follow good data privacy practices. Enterprises need to sufficiently invest in their privacy programmes and teams, not only to retain privacy staff and upskill talent to fill open roles, but to also prioritise privacy training efforts to ensure all employees are supporting privacy initiatives.”