Security News > 2020 > October > Survey: 53% of young cybersecurity professionals fear replacement by automation
Cybersecurity professionals largely embrace automation, but half of younger employees worry that technology could make their roles obsolete, according to a new survey by Exabeam.
The research shows that although a whopping 88% of cybersecurity professionals embrace new technology, confident that automation will help them in their roles, it is the younger generation that is skeptical: 53% of respondents under the age of 45 "Agreed or strongly agreed that AI and ML are a threat to their job security," according to the report.
The findings, part of an annual survey, looked at attitudes regarding salary, training, innovation, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, among 350 cybersecurity professionals worldwide, hailing from the US, Germany, Singapore, Australia, and the UK. Overall, the results were positive, and the findings show that cybersecurity professionals continue to be satisfied in their jobs.
While the younger cohort report fearing automation, only a quarter of cybersecurity professionals older than 45 exhibit that same concern, "Possibly indicating that subsets of security professionals in particular prefer to write rules and manually investigate," the report noted.
"The concern for automation among younger professionals in cybersecurity was surprising to us. In trying to understand this sentiment, we could partially attribute it to lack of on-the-job training using automation technology," said Samantha Humphries, security strategist at Exabeam, in the press release.