Amazon. com Inc. is relying on a combination of internal training and active recruitment to help navigate a worldwide cyber talent shortage, said Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt.
The market for cybersecurity professionals is competitive. The cybersecurity talent gap grew by 26.2% over the past year to around 3.4 million unfilled jobs worldwide, according to professional group (ISC)2.
The broader economic climate is adding to the pressure. Amazon recently announced a companywide hiring pause and expects to lay off up to 10,000 workers, but Mr. Schmidt said he plans to boost Amazon’s security team.
“We as an industry are short hundreds of thousands of security professionals, and even in this very tight hiring environment, we are still hiring security professionals at Amazon this year,” he said.
Mr. Schmidt, a former senior executive at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a decade-plus Amazon veteran, said he was promoted to Amazon’s top security post in January in part to grow the security team and address retention. He oversees information security, personnel security and physical security, and was previously chief information security officer of Amazon’s cloud unit Amazon Web Services.