That’s not a big surprise, as cybersecurity is seen as one of the more resilient areas for tech investment in a more cautious economic environment — though even it is not immune from the tech sector slowdown. But it is an area for young professionals, college students, and workers looking to make career transitions to focus on as the tech sector’s labor force contracts significantly for the first time in a decade, from the largest companies to the venture-backed startup community.
There were 755,743 online job postings in cybersecurity as of December, according to new research from cybersecurity workforce analytics site CyberSeek, created through a partnership of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, CompTIA, and labor market research firm Lightcast. That did represent a year over year decline in postings, from 769,736 in the 12-month period ending December 2021. But with a supply-demand ratio currently at 68 workers per 100 job openings, the nearly 530,000 more cybersecurity workers need in the U.S. went up year over year.
The researchers say the data reinforces a trend that has existed for years now and will persist: the shortage of cyber talent. If all those positions are filled, that’s a labor force positioned for huge growth. The total number of employed cybersecurity workers was estimated at 1.1 million, steady year over year.
Here are the top things to know about pursuing a career in cybersecurity.
How to ‘major’ in cybersecurity during college
When looking for a job, you’re guaranteed to be asked what major you studied in college. While cybersecurity is not a common major for colleges to offer, there are a large range of related majors that can make you a potential candidate for a job in this field. The most obvious comps are computer science, information technology, software development, and even business management.
“The more that you can find either courses or other educational opportunities while you’re in school, to learn both the fundamentals of IT and the fundamentals of cybersecurity, as well as some of the specific high-value, high growth skills that employers are increasingly demanding, that’s going to best set you up for success when you enter the job market,” said Will Markow, vice president of applied research at Lightcast.
However, it’s not as much about a specific major studied as the skills which employers are attempting to identify.
The question that candidates need to be prepared to answer isn’t what they majored in, but, “What have you learned during your degree that prepares you for a career in cybersecurity?” Markow said.
Obtaining technical skills after college
Technical skills in information security theories, network administration, and IT is some of the primary knowledge that candidates need, while strong soft skills like communication and collaboration are additionally important. But whether you are a college student or graduate already in the job market, there are plenty of other opportunities to gain the skills you need to enter this field, primarily through certifications.
Non-profit trade association CompTIA’s Security+ is the most in-demand entry level credential for cybersecurity professionals, according to Markow. By receiving the Security+ certification, CompTIA states that professionals will acquire the skills to assess an environment’s security, monitor hybrid environments, respond to security events and more. Other commonly requested certifications are EC-Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker training and GIAC’s Security Essentials (GSEC) training.
“Cybersecurity is a heavily sophisticated field, and employers place a lot of weight on certain credentials,” Markow said.
How to get started in job search
Some of the most common entry-level positions include cybersecurity analysts, cybersecurity technician specialists, and cybercrime analysts. These positions focus more on what is defined as reactive work, for example, learning about the types of threats that organizations are facing, and identifying when threats need to be investigated and remediated.
As professionals progress in a cybersecurity career, the goal is to gradually take on more proactive work helping organizations design secure digital infrastructure.
There are many opportunities for existing tech professionals to make the move into this field, with common launch pads including other IT roles such as network administration, software development, systems engineering and even IT support; and by targeting the lower-level cyber positions.
“Since those roles often have lower barriers to entry than some of the more advanced positions in the field, and if you are able to target one of the certifications and obtain one of those entry level certifications from CompTIA, or other providers, then you will have the greatest chance of finding an opportunity in one of those roles,” Markow said.
The approach of first entering through the broader IT job market can work for new labor force entrants as well. “If you’re starting from complete scratch, it’s often useful to target some of those positions that can serve as launching pads into the core cybersecurity roles,” Markow said.
Jobs will often pay over $100,000
Cybersecurity jobs pay well, too.
The average salary ranges between $100,000-$120,000.
There are going to be differences in pay based on experience level, as well as the specific role.
“You probably won’t start at $110,000,” Markow said. “You might start somewhere in the $70,000-$90,000 range, depending on what part of the country you’re in. But as you gain experience in and advance within cybersecurity, the salaries become progressively larger and more appealing.”
Where the jobs are concentrated also varies region to region, and by sector. The new research found public sector cybersecurity job demand growing by 25% to 45,708 postings in 2022, a faster growth rate than in the private sector, but still far fewer jobs overall compared to the private sector’s 710,035 listings. Lightcast says that public sector job demand trend isn’t a one-year phenomenon, growing by 58% over the past three years in all. Related to that, the Washington, D.C. metro area accounted for 19% of all public sector domestic cybersecurity job listings.
An Nvidia chip is seen through a magnifying glass in Beijing, China, on August 1, 2025.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Nvidia has asked some of its component suppliers to stop production related to its made-for-China H20 general processing units, as Beijing cracks down on the American chip darling, The Information reported Friday.
The directive comes weeks after the Chinese government told local tech companies to stop buying the chips due to alleged security concerns, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Nvidia reportedly has asked Arizona-based Amkor Technology, which handles the advanced packaging of the company’s H20 chips, and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which supplies memory for them, to halt production. Samsung and Amkor did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
A separate report from Reuters, citing sources, said that Nvidia had asked Foxconn to suspend work related to the H20s. Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to an inquiry from CNBC, an Nvidia spokesperson said “We constantly manage our supply chain to address market conditions.”
The news further throws the return of the H20s to the China market in doubt, after Washington said it would issue export licenses, allowing the chip’s exports to China — whose shipment had effectively been banned in April.
Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China had summoned Nvidia regarding national security concerns with the H20s and had asked the company to provide information on the chips.
Beijing has raised concerns that the chips could be have certain tracking technology or “backdoors,” allowing them to be operated remotely. U.S. lawmakers have proposed legislation that would require AI chips under export regulations to be equipped with location-tracking systems to avoid their illegal shipments.
Speaking to reporters in Taiwan on Friday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that China had asked questions about security “backdoors,” and that the company had made it clear they do not exist.
“Hopefully the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient. We’re in discussions with them,” he said, adding that Nvidia had been “surprised” by the queries.
“As you know, [Beijing] requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20s, for some time and I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses, and so hopefully this will be resolved,” he said.
Nvidia in a statement on Friday said “The market can use the H20 with confidence.”
It added: “As both governments recognize, the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure. China won’t rely on American chips for government operations, just like the U.S. government would not rely on chips from China. However, allowing U.S. chips for beneficial commercial business use is good for everyone.”
Last month, Nvidia had reportedly sent notices to major tech companies and AI developers urging them against the use of the H20s, in what first had appeared as a soft mandate. The Information later reported that Beijing had told some firms, including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, to halt orders of the chips altogether, until the completion of a national security review.
It had been seen as a major win for Nvidia when Huang announced last month that the U.S. government would allow sales of the company’s H20 chips to China.
However, the national security scrutiny the H20s are now facing from the Chinese side, highlights the difficulties of navigating Nvidia’s business through increasing tensions and shifting trade policy between Washington and Beijing.
Chip industry analysts have also said Beijing’s actions appear to reinforce its commitment to its own chip self-sufficiency campaigns and its intention to resist the Trump administration’s plan to keep American AI hardware dominant in China.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta has agreed to spend more than $10 billion on Google cloud services, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The agreement spans six years, said the people, who asked not to be named because the terms are confidential. The deal was reported earlier by The Information.
Google is aiming to land big cloud contracts as it chases larger rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in cloud infrastructure. Earlier this year Google won cloud business from OpenAI, which had earlier been deeply dependent on Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure.
Alphabet said in July that the Google Cloud unit, which contains productivity software subscriptions in addition to infrastructure, produced $2.83 billion in operating income on $13.6 billion in revenue during the second quarter. Revenue growth of 32% outpaced expansion of 13.8% for the company as a whole.
Meta’s deal with Google is mainly around artificial intelligence infrastructure, said one of the people. Meta said in its earnings report last month that it expects total expenses for 2025 to come in the range of $114 billion and $118 billion. It’s investing heavily in AI infrastructure and talent, building out its Llama family of models and adding AI across its portfolio of services.
Meta and Google have long been rivals in online ads. But Meta needs all the cloud infrastructure it can access. The company operates data centers and has made commitments to use cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft.
CEO of Workday Carl M. Eschenbach and Ana Eschenbach attend the Allen and Company Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at The Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Workday reported an earnings beat on Thursday, but issued guidance that was inline with estimates and warned of pressure in some areas. The shares slipped in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did relative to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.21 adjusted vs. $2.11 expected
Revenue: $2.35 billion vs. $2.34 billion expected
Revenue increased 13% from a year earlier in the fiscal second quarter, which ended on July 31, according to a statement. The company’s net income rose to $228 million, or 84 cents per share, from $132 million, or 49 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
For the current quarter, Workday called for $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and $180 million in professional services, which implies $2.42 billion in total revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected a total of $2.42 billion. The company sees an adjusted operating margin of 28.0%, just below the 28.1% consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Workday, which provides software for finance and human resources departments, now sees $8.82 billion in subscription revenue for the full year, and $700 million in professional services revenue, implying a total of $9.52 billion. The LSEG consensus was $9.51 billion.
The part of Workday that works with state and local governments faced challenges during the quarter, CEO Carl Eschenbach said on the earnings call.
“I think we’ll continue to see that as people are trying to figure out what the funding slowdown is going to look like, all the way to the state level,” he said.
Meanwhile, higher education in the U.S. is facing pressure from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March to shut down the Department of Education.
“If it’s a higher ed university that includes a healthcare system, they too are getting a little pullback in funding,” Eschenbach said. “So it’s something we’re keeping our eye on.”
Also on Thursday Workday said it’s acquiring Paradox, a company with conversational artificial intelligence software for recruiting, for undisclosed terms. During the quarter, Workday announced AI agents for extracting accounting details from documents and reporting absent days.
As of Thursday’s market close, Workday shares were down about 12% this year, while the Nasdaq is up about 9%.