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Cybersecurity roles remain difficult to staff because organizations report gaps in both workforce capacity and specific skills. AI adds pressure on two fronts: organizations worry about GenAI-enabled adversarial advances, while also needing people who can assess AI tools and secure their use. The available 2025 evidence describes reported capability gaps and skills needs—not a count of open jobs—and does not show that AI attacks alone caused current vacancies.
What does “unfilled cybersecurity jobs” mean?
The phrase can refer to three different things, and they are not interchangeable:
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- Job advertisements or openings: posted roles at a particular time and in a particular market.
- Reported staffing shortages: employers’ or practitioners’ views about whether their teams can meet their needs.
- Estimated workforce gaps: calculations comparing estimated demand with an estimate of the available workforce.
The 2025 findings from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and ISC2 primarily describe survey responses, skills needs, and organizations’ confidence in their capabilities. They do not establish a current count of open cybersecurity positions, including a 2026 U.S. total.
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What the latest reported skills-gap figures show
In the WEF’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025, two-thirds of surveyed organizations reported moderate-to-critical cybersecurity skills gaps, while 14% said they had the people and skills needed. The report said the reported skills gap had increased 8% from 2024 to 2025. These are organization survey findings, not a census of vacant roles.
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- Public sector: 49% of public-sector organizations indicated they lacked the workforce to meet their cybersecurity objectives, according to the WEF’s 2025 report.
- ISC2’s 2025 study: respondents identified skills priorities rather than a new aggregate workforce-gap estimate. The study surveyed 16,029 cybersecurity practitioners and decision-makers.
ISC2’s 2024 workforce-gap estimate was 4,763,963. ISC2 defined that figure as the difference between participants’ reported cybersecurity staffing requirements and the number of active cybersecurity professionals. It was a methodology-dependent estimate, not a live job-board count; ISC2 did not publish a comparable aggregate estimate in its 2025 study.
How AI is changing cybersecurity work
AI contributes to the workforce challenge in two distinct ways: it changes what organizations must defend against, and it creates security work around organizations’ own AI adoption. The WEF’s 2025 findings describe these pressures as concerns and capability needs; they do not establish that AI independently caused a particular number of attacks, layoffs, or vacancies.
Organizations are preparing for AI’s impact
In the WEF’s 2025 survey, 66% of organizations expected AI to have a major impact on cybersecurity in 2025. Yet 37% reported having processes to assess AI tools before deployment. That gap points to a readiness challenge: organizations expect AI to matter, but many reported no such assessment process.
GenAI-enabled adversarial advances are a concern
Nearly 47% of organizations cited adversarial advances powered by generative AI as a primary concern in the WEF’s 2025 report. This is a measure of reported concern, not evidence that a specific share had experienced an AI-enabled attack.
AI security and cloud security are prominent skills needs
In ISC2’s 2025 study, 41% of respondents named AI as a pressing skills need and 36% named cloud security. These results help explain why a simple headcount figure can miss an important part of the problem: a team may need more people, different capabilities, or both. ISC2’s decision not to issue a new aggregate gap estimate does not mean staffing shortages have disappeared.
The WEF frames AI as support for cybersecurity professionals, not a substitute for them: “While AI will not replace the cybersecurity workforce, it will be a complementary capability.” The report also identifies AI proficiency and automation as possible ways to help address the skills gap.
What employers and workforce planners can do
The WEF Strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework groups the response into four areas. They are complementary options, not interventions the framework proves will close the shortage on their own.
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Make cybersecurity careers visible to people who may not already see themselves as candidates. A broader talent pipeline can help expand access to prospective workers, while still leaving employers responsible for developing the capabilities their roles require.
Educate and train professionals
Training can build new capabilities and help existing teams adapt as needs change. The 2025 skills priorities reported by ISC2 make AI and cloud security relevant areas to consider. Individual learning can support this work, but it cannot replace an employer’s responsibility to train and resource its team.
Recruit for capabilities, not only familiar career paths
Recruitment is a separate lever from training: it brings needed people into an organization, while education develops skills in a current or future workforce. Considering candidates from a wider range of backgrounds may widen the pool, but the cited framework does not compare the effectiveness of particular recruiting methods.
Retain existing professionals
Retention helps preserve organizational knowledge and avoids losing capability built through experience. It is one of the WEF framework’s priorities, although the cited evidence does not quantify how much any particular retention measure reduces staffing gaps.
Why a single shortage number can mislead
A workforce-gap estimate, a survey response about skills, and a count of job postings answer different questions. Treating them as equivalent can make a long-term estimate sound like a tally of jobs waiting to be filled, or make a skills survey sound like proof that every organization lacks headcount.
For a practical reading of the evidence, ask what is being measured, who responded, and when. The WEF’s 2025 findings describe organizations’ reported gaps and AI-related expectations. ISC2’s 2025 study identifies skills needs among practitioners and decision-makers. ISC2’s older estimate uses a stated comparison between self-reported staffing requirements and an estimated active workforce; it should remain labeled as a 2024 estimate rather than presented as today’s vacancy count.
Together, the evidence supports a real workforce and skills challenge, with AI adding new security demands. It does not support the stronger claim that AI attacks alone are forcing a specific number of jobs to remain unfilled.
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