Two of the world's fastest-growing skills are in the same job description

Date:
Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:30:45 +0000

Description:
The future of cybersecurity depends on professionals who can secure and
govern AI.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter If you look at where global skills demand is climbing fastest right now, two areas are pretty hard to ignore: artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, AI and
big data sit at the top of the fastest-growing skills ranking, with networks and cybersecurity directly behind. These skills are increasingly being asked of the same person. Latest Videos From Watch full video here: Brooke Johnson Social Links Navigation

Chief Legal Counsel, Senior Vice President of Security and Human Resources, Ivanti. For most of the last decade, these were distinct careers.

Cybersecurity professionals attended cybersecurity conferences, earned cybersecurity certifications and worked in cybersecurity teams. You may like Who decides when a cyber AI tool is safe to deploy? Why modern cyber conflict is partly a global skills challenge Why cybersecurity needs hybrid AI, not platform consolidation

AI and machine learning sat elsewhere in data science org charts, research labs, product groups.

The two communities knew about each other. They rarely shared a calendar. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro
newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Security teams are now expected to manage AI systems That separation has collapsed in the last 18 months or so, mostly because security teams are now expected to deploy, oversee and defend AI systems as a routine part of their work.

Research finds that 87% of security teams are prioritizing agentic AI adoption, with 77% of cybersecurity professionals comfortable letting these systems take action without human review. Adoption is happening fast. Demand for people capable of managing that adoption is growing accordingly. And the talent pool, predictably, has not caught up.

Hybrid skills is the operative phrase right now. Research finds that 59% of security professionals expect demand for hybrid skills to climb over the next three to five years. What hybrid means here is pretty specific. You need someone who understands attack surfaces and can also interrogate why a model behaved the way it did. What to read next The cybersecurity boom hiding a growing privacy skills shortage Report finds cybersecurity workers feel underpaid, undervalued and overstressed Four key areas in cybersecurity that need fresh thinking and actionable steps in 2026

That same person has to have compliance literacy and be able to evaluate whether a deployed system is drifting from its intended behavior. And also be able to talk to engineers about adversarial inputs in the morning and to a general counsel about regulatory exposure in the afternoon.

That's a lot of capability for one job description. But its whats happening. Active demand and under-supplied This profile barely existed as a hiring category two years ago. Today it's in active demand and naturally under-supplied. According to the World Economic Forum, only 14% of organization's have the skilled talent they need to meet their cybersecurity objectives.

And that figure becomes more uncomfortable when you remember that the bar keeps moving. AI literacy is now part of meeting cybersecurity objectives. A team that was adequate 18 months ago may not be adequate now, through no
fault of their own.

External recruiting is not going to be a panacea for most companies. The supply of candidates who already combine deep security expertise with AI fluency and regulatory awareness is thin enough that aggressive hiring
against this profile produces long, expensive vacancies and a lot of bruised hiring managers.

Which means most companies will have to grow these professionals internally. That looks like routing existing security staff through AI literacy training, embedding compliance professionals with model engineering teams, or rotating talent across both functions deliberately enough that the hybrid skill set develops as a byproduct.

This is a longer game than most CISOs and HR leaders want to play. A real opportunity for cybersecurity professionals Understandably, at least on the surface. It produces dividends in 12 to 24 months, in a discipline where the threat surface changes every month.

But the alternative is worse. Continuing to hire based on the old talent profile means continuing to deploy AI systems that nobody on the security
team is fully equipped to govern, which means continuing to accumulate organizational risk that compounds quietly until it surfaces all at once. And it always surfaces.

There is a real opportunity buried in this for cybersecurity professionals reading the same data. It used to be that a career path like this one would plateau around senior analyst or security architect. Now it extends into AI risk leadership, AI governance, model security and adjacent roles that essentially didnt exist as career destinations three years ago.

If you're a practitioner who adds AI literacy to existing security depth, you are positioning yourself for roles that are scarce, valuable and likely to remain so for at least the rest of the decade.

For employers, the takeaway probably feels less shiny, but its no less
urgent. The cybersecurity workforce of 2030 The cybersecurity workforce of 2030 is being trained right now, mostly by companies willing to invest in development before the market makes it cheap to hire ready-made talent.

There may not be an explosion of market talent, because theyre already in house. That means you really cant wait around for these unicorn skill sets to hit the talent market. Instead, you have to cultivate them.

Look at your existing security and compliance teams. Find the people with curiosity about how AI systems work. Invest in them now.

The organizations that move first will be the ones best prepared to secure what comes next. We've reviewed and ranked the best HR software . This
article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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