Report shows businesses struggling with privacy skills gap

One in five European businesses said a skills gap means it can take them more than six months to fill a technical privacy position, a new report claims

A new report published by global digital trust association ISACA has revealed that while many European businesses understand the importance of privacy, they are struggling to implement it effectively.

According to the report entitled Privacy in Practice, 87% of European organisations offer privacy awareness training to employees, but 94% of companies surveyed recognised a privacy skills gap within their business.

The report also found that 59% of technical privacy teams in Europe are understaffed, and one in five businesses said it takes them more than six months to fill a technical privacy position. Furthermore, 41% of businesses reported that their privacy budgets are underfunded.

The most common causes of privacy failures reported by businesses included a lack of training or poor training (49%), data breaches (38%), and not practising privacy by design (39%).

Privacy skills demand is good news for candidates

“Privacy professionals play a key role in establishing digital trust,” says Chris Dimitriadis, Global Chief Strategy Officer, ISACA. “As technology advances, introducing new complexities and threats and as the cyberthreat landscape increases in size and sophistication, demand for these individuals is only going to grow. Heightened privacy skills demand is good news for candidates with privacy technology knowledge but also bad news for businesses that are struggling to close the privacy skills gap.”

In light of the findings, ISACA has urged businesses to change their approach to closing the privacy skills gap, warning that failure to do so could jeopardise their relationships with customers and damage their reputation.

Tony Hughes, ISACA Emerging Trends Working Group Member, says: “Only searching for candidates with specific experience and technical privacy skills is an outdated mindset – it immediately limits businesses to a small pool of people. Instead, organisations need to lean on reskilling people in non-privacy roles, using contract employees and focusing on individuals with the right soft skills to reduce the privacy skills gap.”

Share

Featured Articles

Celonis Data Insights Driving BMW's Sustainability Journey

Celonis and the BMW Group have strengthened their partnership to optimise the auto giant’s processes and increase efficiency, productivity & sustainability

How Zoom is Using AI Innovation to Reimagine Teamwork

Zoom has announced Workplace, its new AI-powered collaboration platform, to help reimagine teamwork, facilitate connections and improve productivity

How SAP is Accelerating Deutsche Telekom’s Cloud Journey

Europe’s largest telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom is using RISE with SAP to accelerate its journey to the cloud

Alibaba Cloud’s Dr Li Feifei: Combining AI & Cloud Computing

Data & Data Analytics

Mustafa Suleyman: DeepMind Cofounder is new Microsoft AI CEO

AI & Machine Learning

Nvidia Blackwell Aims to Continue Powering AI Acceleration

AI & Machine Learning