Share of Women in UK Cyber Roles Now Just 17%

Cybersecurity is now the fastest-growing IT role in the UK, but the share of women in such positions has fallen dramatically since 2021, according to Socura.

The managed detection and response (MDR) provider analyzed Office of National Statistics (ONS) annual population survey data, which tracks occupation figures based on 15 IT-related Standard Occupational Classification codes, to compile its report: Their Next Job Was in Cyber.

The title is a reference to an infamous government advertising campaign in 2020 designed to encourage more individuals to eschew a career in non-IT fields for one in cyber.

On the face of it, government efforts to encourage more people to join the cybersecurity sector have worked. Socura claimed the number of security professionals has more than doubled since the Jan-Dec 2021 annual population survey – from 28,500 to 65,000 in March 2024.

An increase of 128% makes it the fastest-growing of any IT-related profession over that period, followed by IT support (42%), IT trainers (33%), and IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (33%).

Read more on skills shortages: It’s Time to Think Creatively to Combat Skills Shortages

However, there are some major caveats. It is doing so from an extremely low base: there are over 100,000 professionals working as IT trainers, and similar numbers as network pros and directors. When it comes to IT business analysts and managers, there are 200,000+ in each role, and there are more than 550,000 professionals working as software developers in the UK, according to Socura.

In fact, the report claimed that there’s only one cybersecurity professional for every 86 UK businesses.

Gender diversity is also getting worse in an already unbalanced sector. Socura claimed that just 17% of cyber professionals today are women, versus 24% in 2024.

More Talent Needed

Kathryn Jones, head of school, computer science and informatics at Cardiff University, argued that more initiatives like the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)’s Cyber First Girls competition are needed to raise awareness among those still at school.

“Attracting more workers, particularly women, into cyber remains a key challenge for the industry,” she added. “However, gender imbalance and the low representation of women is a wider issue in the tech sector, not only cybersecurity. The number of women enrolled on computer science and software engineering courses, for example, is typically also low.”

Socura CEO, Andy Kays, praised new NCSC-backed academic centres of excellence as helping to close the overall cyber workforce gap in the UK.

“By supporting UK universities to conduct world leading cybersecurity research, we enhance their reputation on the world stage, we increase course applications, and we create clusters of cybersecurity excellence across home nations,” he said.

“We need more initiatives like this, and more ways to reach even younger people so that they can discover the important role of cybersecurity and the wide range of career options in the industry.”

According to ISC2 data, which is based on interviews with nearly 16,000 global cybersecurity leaders, the UK’s cyber workforce is around 349,000. However, that figure is down 4.9% annually, while the shortfall of workers increased 27% to over 93,300.