Indian companies struggle to staff cybersecurity teams even as AI agents go

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Fewer than a third of monthly cybersecurity openings are filled, even as companies step up hiring amid rising AI-driven risks

By Rohan Das

Updated - October 20, 2026 at 09:48 PM. | Chennai

As concerns mount over poor cyber hygiene in Indian organisations, particularly in view of the emerging threat from rogue AI agents, companies are struggling to find skilled cybersecurity professionals to plug vulnerabilities.

Data from staffing firms and job portals point to a widening gap between demand and supply. Despite rising job postings and active recruitment, only a fraction of cybersecurity vacancies are being filled.

Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm that tracks monthly active technology job openings, estimates that fewer than a third of the 6,000-7,000 new cybersecurity openings each month are filled.

“The freshness of the current active cybersecurity openings is under 30%, denoting a fill rate of one-third demand being met every month. A one-third fill rate points at a lower supply of readily available talent for this skillset,” said Kamal Karanth, Co-founder of Xpheno. He added that demand was driven by both business expansion and replacement hiring.

TeamLease Digital data show that only 5-6 per cent of companies hiring for cybersecurity roles are able to fill vacancies within a month, even as openings for cybersecurity analysts have grown 10-11 per cent year-on-year.

Neeti Sharma, CEO of TeamLease Digital, said the talent gap was pronounced across sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), retail and logistics, as companies invest in cybersecurity while digitising operations. High-value IT and information security roles paying more than ₹20 lakh a year grew 40 per cent year on year, she added.

Demand for specialised skills

The challenge is not necessarily a lack of applicants. Job platforms Indeed and Apna have reported an increase of more than 200 per cent in applications.

However, experts said that recruitment had become more selective than during the lockdown and extended work-from-home period, when cybersecurity hiring and talent absorption were at their peak. “The strongest requirement today is for people who can demonstrate practical knowledge and identify vulnerabilities,” said Kartik Narayan, CEO of Apna.

Certifications and familiarity with specialised tools, such as Splunk and Microsoft Sentinel, could help, but recruitment remained challenging because employers increasingly require deeper specialisation, he said.

Apna’s platform data show that vulnerability assessment and penetration testing (VAPT) specialists, security compliance analysts, network security engineers and cloud security professionals are among the most sought-after cybersecurity roles.

Security risks

The talent gap comes amid warnings from India’s cybersecurity nodal agency, CERT-In, about risks posed by autonomous AI agents accessing live systems within Indian organisations.

According to the advisory, such agents accessed business records, including personal and confidential data, by exploiting conventional vulnerabilities such as exposed credentials, dormant application programming interfaces (APIs), excessive cloud permissions and unpatched systems.

Published on October 20, 2026

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