Demand soars for security consultants

Security consultants are in demand as companies look to raise awareness of the issue in their businesses, but finding the right candidates could be hard.

The Global Information Security Survey has found that six out of 10 European firms have implemented security awareness programmes in the past 12 months. And 10 per cent have gone as far as hiring security consultants.

As businesses become increasingly aware of the threats, the need for security skills is becoming paramount, and the demand is increasing.

Recruitment agency Haymarket Consulting reported a rising demand for security specialists. "This is particularly so for people at consultant level," said director Nigel Lawrence.

Consultants are sought after because they can raise awareness throughout an organisation, he added.

But consultants are looking for job security following redundancies from consulting firms earlier in the year, and are reluctant to move to new jobs, said Lawrence.

Increasingly, security firms are being asked to provide education programmes for staff. And the drive to raise awareness is being matched by efforts to make security a more integral part of business applications.

Phil Huggins, managing security architect for @stake, said: "Education has become a big thing for us.

"It's not just raising awareness. We are training application developers to build security principles into their coding."

More than 8,000 IT managers took part in the survey, with nearly 3,000 respondents in Europe.