Inside Europe’s Cybersecurity Skill Shortage in 2026

The cybersecurity talent market in Europe has become a constraint on business continuity. 

Organisations are scaling cloud estates, choosing modern tech stacks, and connecting supply chains to AI faster than their ability to secure them. At the same time, attackers are becoming more coordinated, well-resourced, and incentivised. 

High-profile, crown-jewel breaches and new regulations (like the EU’s NIS2 directive) are raising the stakes for security, yet many organizations struggle to fill critical cyber roles.

This article examines the realities behind that gap: how big the shortage actually is in Europe, what it means for German and Estonian organisations, and how to rebuild the talent pipeline. 

The Widening Skills Gap: Europe in Focus

A record 5.5 million cybersecurity professionals are employed worldwide. Still, an estimated 4.8 million additional experts are needed to defend organizations.

Globally, the cybersecurity workforce gap hit about 4.8 million unfilled positions in 2024, a 19% year-over-year increase (according to DeepStrike). 

Europe is among the regions most acutely affected. In the past year alone, according to ISC2, Europe’s cyber workforce gap widened by nearly 10%. It reached an estimated shortage of 424,000 skilled workers. 

In other words, Europe has roughly 1.4 million cybersecurity professionals in place, but needs about 1.8 million.

EU states face a major shortfall

Drilling down further, the European Union (EU) states collectively face a shortfall of around 274,000 cybersecurity professionals, according to this industry study. 

Major economies are feeling the pinch. 

In Germany, for example, analysts project a talent gap of up to 106,000 cybersecurity workers if current trends continue. 

Even tech-savvy smaller nations are not immune. Estonia (according to a government-supported study) must expand its cybersecurity workforce by as much as 86% in five years to meet demand. These figures underscore that the skills shortage is a Europe-wide challenge, cutting across both large and small markets.

Why is this gap so large? 

On one hand, cyber threats and regulatory requirements are growing faster than the workforce. European organizations are racing to implement new EU cyber regulations and employ talent. 

“To implement all the current and upcoming EU legal requirements for cybersecurity, we need more people with certain skills. Without this human capital, we cannot achieve our goal of a high level of cybersecurity across the EU,” warned the Executive Director of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity. 

On the other hand, the pipeline of new talent hasn’t kept up, and recent economic pressures have actually made hiring more difficult. In 2024, several companies froze hiring or even cut security staff despite rising threats. 

In fact, for the first time ever, budget constraints are now even the bigger problem. A recent ICT2 survey found that “lack of budget” is now cited as the #1 reason for both unfilled cyber positions and skills gaps on teams. 

This reality highlights that the shortage is not purely a pipeline problem. It’s also about priorities and resources.

How the Shortage Hurts Companies

For CIOs and CTOs, the cybersecurity skills gap is not theoretical. It shows up in day-to-day operations. Two-thirds of organisations say their security teams are understaffed, according to the 2024 ISC2 Study. 

In Europe, 61% of cybersecurity professionals say their team is too small for the workload, according to ISACA’s 2024.

This has a direct impact on risk. 

59% of security professionals report that the shortage has weakened their organisation’s ability to defend itself, and companies with serious skills gaps are almost twice as likely to suffer a material breach. 

When a breach happens, it is also more expensive. Organisations with high security staffing shortages faced an average breach cost of $5.74 million, compared with $3.98 million for well-staffed teams, according to IBM’s report.

The shortage also slows strategic work. 

Nearly half of European organisations struggle to find candidates with the right qualifications for open cybersecurity roles, according to Europa EU. As a result, critical projects are delayed, IT staff without security training are stretched thin, and 58% of European cyber professionals believe a major attack on their organisation is likely within a year.

Bridging the Gap: Strategies for Talent and Resilience

While the cybersecurity skills shortage is a complex challenge, it’s not insurmountable. A proactive approach can bridge the gap and build a more resilient security workforce. 

Here are several strategies companies in Europe (and beyond) are adopting to tackle the talent shortfall:

#1 Invest in training and upskilling

The fastest way to close the skills gap is to grow the people you already have. Many organisations are increasing their security budgets, with employee training as a top priority.

In practice, this means giving IT staff clear paths into cybersecurity roles: funding certifications, running internal “cyber academies”, and pairing juniors with experienced security engineers. 

When people see a way to progress, they are more likely to stay, which eases both hiring pressure and turnover.

European companies are also tapping into larger initiatives. 

Cisco, for example, has committed to training 250,000 people in cybersecurity across the EU by 2025, according to its EU skills programme. 

#2 Rethink hiring and broaden the talent pool

When specialist skills are scarce, insisting on a “perfect CV” just slows everything down. Many European organisations are already changing how they hire. 

86% say they are willing to bring in entry-level cybersecurity staff and train them on the job. 59% are relaxing strict experience requirements, according to ISACA’s 2024 State of Cybersecurity (Europe).

For CIOs and CTOs, this means shifting from “hire the fully formed expert” to “hire for aptitude and potential”. 

Candidates from networking, software engineering, or even non-technical roles can move into security if they have the right mindset and support. Skills like communication, problem-solving, and curiosity are increasingly valued alongside technical knowledge, according to the same survey.

Practical steps include opening junior roles, creating apprenticeship or graduate programmes, and removing unnecessary filters such as very narrow degree requirements. 

#3 Improve retention by improving work conditions

Closing the talent gap isn’t only about hiring more people. It’s also about keeping the ones you already have. 

Burnout and churn are major contributors to the shortage. Security teams consistently report rising workloads and stress, with 68% of cybersecurity professionals in Europe saying their role has become significantly more stressful over the past five years, according to ISACA’s report.

Well-designed retention strategies tend to be straightforward. These include reducing on-call pressure by adding depth to incident response, giving security teams the right tools to eliminate repetitive work, and offering competitive compensation that reflects both skill scarcity and business impact. 

A lack of defined career paths is another reason people leave. Clear progression frameworks, development budgets, and mentoring often outperform expensive recruitment efforts in the long run.

The economics also favour retention. 

Replacing an experienced cybersecurity professional is both slow and costly, and unfilled roles increase operational risk. For CIOs and CTOs, treating retention as a strategic investment rather than a budget line item can stabilise teams.

#4 Use external partners to cover critical gaps

When the right people are hard to hire, external partners can keep your risk under control. 

Many organisations already rely on managed security service providers (MSSPs) or incident response partners to monitor threats, run SOC operations, or support major investigations. 

Around half of organisations globally say they outsource at least some security operations, largely to access skills they cannot build quickly enough in-house, according to the 2024 ISC2 Study.

The point is not to replace internal teams but to be deliberate about what must stay inside the organisation and what can be trusted to a specialist. Functions like 24/7 monitoring, threat hunting, red teaming, or digital forensics are often good candidates for a partner model. 

Strategy, architecture, and risk decisions stay close to the business. Clear SLAs, shared runbooks, and regular joint exercises help ensure that external teams feel like an extension of your own.

#5 Use automation and AI to stretch your team

Security teams are already moving in this direction. Almost half of organisations say they are piloting or using AI in security operations, mainly to reduce manual work and speed up investigations.

In practice, this means using SIEM, SOAR, and AI-assisted tools to triage alerts, correlate logs, and suggest likely root causes. This way, humans can focus on decisions rather than data wrangling. 

Organisations with high levels of security AI and automation cut average breach costs by more than $1.7 million and shortened response times by over 100 days, according to IBM.

The goal here is not to “replace” analysts but to remove low-value tasks. Manual log review, repetitive enrichment, or simple playbook execution. 

Done well, automation becomes a force multiplier. It makes a small, skilled team feel much larger. It also frees up experts to work on architecture, threat modelling, and resilience.

#6 Diversify and widen the long-term talent pipeline

Europe’s cybersecurity workforce is still built on a very narrow pipeline. 

Women remain under-represented (roughly a quarter of the workforce), and most roles are filled by people coming through the same technical degree paths. This limits both the size of the talent pool and the diversity of thinking needed for modern security work.

European organisations are beginning to respond. 

More companies are supporting reskilling and mid-career transitions, while EU-level initiatives (such as the EU Cybersecurity Skills Academy) are funding programmes to bring new entrants into the field. Apprenticeships, scholarships, and partnerships with universities are also gaining traction, especially in Germany and the Nordic region.

The strategic benefit is twofold. Widening the pipeline increases the supply of future talent, and bringing in people from different backgrounds (software, psychology, law, data, networking) strengthens the organisation’s ability to address threats that are no longer purely technical. 

This is a slow lever, but it is one of the only scalable solutions to a talent shortage.

The Skills Gap Is Real, But It Is Solvable

Europe’s cybersecurity talent shortage is a structural problem, not a temporary hiring blip.

The encouraging news is that the gap can be closed with deliberate action: developing people internally, widening the hiring funnel, retaining specialists for longer, partnering where it makes sense, and using automation to remove low-value work. 

None of these alone is sufficient, but together they reshape the equation.