The Coming Cybersecurity Job Market Crisis: Layoffs, Offshoring, and the New National Risk

We’ve spent the last decade talking about the “cyber talent shortage.” Every conference, every board meeting, every government strategy paper, but now layoffs

☕ Coffee Cup Cheers, Security Gang.

We’ve spent the last decade talking about the “cyber talent shortage.” Every conference, every board meeting, every government strategy paper, it’s the same refrain: we need more cyber defenders.

But something’s shifting. Quietly, methodically, dangerously.

The cybersecurity job market is showing early signs of contraction, not expansion. Companies are cutting staff, outsourcing critical roles, and experimenting with AI and off-shore labor to “optimize costs.” On the surface, it looks like efficiency. Underneath, it’s a potential national security nightmare.

The Layoff Wave Hitting Cybersecurity

Let’s start with the facts.

CrowdStrike—one of the most respected cybersecurity firms on the planet—announced a 5% global workforce reduction this spring, citing “AI streamlining.” Microsoft, Intel, and other tech giants are also trimming across their security divisions. Even CISA, America’s lead civilian cyber defense agency, saw a thousand staff depart through cuts and attrition this year.

These aren’t bad companies making bad decisions. They’re reacting to market pressure, investor expectations, and a tech sector that over-hired during the pandemic boom. But the ripple effects hit home for every practitioner:

• Fewer internal teams handling more systems.

• More automation replacing Tier-1 and Tier-2 SOC roles.

• More managed services replacing in-house security.

It’s a dangerous paradox: demand for cybersecurity has never been higher—yet the number of people doing the work inside organizations is shrinking.

The Lost Muscle Memory of Multitasking

There’s another, quieter crisis inside this shift—one that doesn’t show up on earnings calls: we’ve lost our muscle memory for multitasking.

During the pandemic hiring spree, organizations built hyper-specialized teams. Every function had its own engineer, analyst, or architect. It was efficient—on paper. But it created silos, and over time, we lost the generalist edge that once defined great cybersecurity practitioners.

Before 2020, a mid-level security engineer might configure firewalls in the morning, triage alerts by noon, and rewrite IAM policies after lunch. Today, those tasks belong to three different people, across two different time zones, managed by one overworked lead.

That’s not progress—it’s paralysis by specialization.

When layoffs hit, those fragmented roles don’t collapse neatly into one another. The institutional muscle memory—the ability for one professional to pivot, prioritize, and execute across multiple disciplines—is gone.

And now, when the business needs agility, we’ve built a workforce that only knows how to work in narrow lanes.

The result?

• Slower incident response.

• Weaker cross-domain understanding.

• Reduced situational awareness across the enterprise.

Cybersecurity requires context—and context only comes from practitioners who can see the forest, not just their assigned tree.

Outsourcing Security: A Cost-Saving That Costs Too Much

Boards are under pressure. Investors want margins. CFOs want predictability. So the formula seems simple:
“Why pay six-figure salaries when we can off-shore the SOC and automate the rest?”

The problem? You can outsource a function—but you can’t outsource accountability.

When you move detection, response, or engineering offshore, you extend your attack surface across jurisdictions, legal systems, and geopolitical boundaries. The risks multiply:

• Access control becomes diluted.

• Visibility becomes partial.

• Accountability becomes diffused.

And when the outsourcing crosses into adversarial nations, you’re not saving money—you’re gambling with sovereignty.

The Microsoft–DoD Scandal: When Offshoring Meets National Security

A recent ProPublica investigation exposed a staggering example of this risk: Microsoft used engineers based in China to work on U.S. Department of Defense cloud systems—under a model where American “digital escorts” oversaw their activity.

Except those escorts weren’t cyber experts. Many didn’t even understand what the engineers were doing.

That meant Chinese coders had operational access—directly or indirectly—to systems tied to the U.S. military, intelligence, and defense supply chains.

Let that sink in.

When the news broke, Congress erupted. Senator Tom Cotton demanded answers from the DoD. Microsoft quietly announced it would end the practice. But the damage is already done—not because a breach occurred (that we know of), but because trust was breached.

If Chinese engineers can “digitally assist” on Pentagon systems, what else are we outsourcing without realizing the geopolitical implications?

The Hidden National Risk

Cybersecurity isn’t just a technical discipline—it’s part of national infrastructure. When we outsource the workforce, we outsource the very capacity to defend the nation’s digital backbone.

Every company that shifts its cyber operations offshore is, in some way, redefining what “sovereignty” means in the digital era.

When a critical breach happens tomorrow, will your first responder be in Virginia—or Vietnam? In Maryland—or Mumbai?

I’m not arguing against global collaboration. But there’s a difference between global partnerships and blind dependency.

Cybersecurity talent may be global, but trust is local.

Resilience as Competitive Advantage

There’s a hard truth here: security maturity isn’t just about prevention—it’s about recovery.
And that’s where well-structured, cross-functional teams separate resilient businesses from fragile ones.

Take Jaguar Land Rover. When the company suffered a cyberattack in early 2025, production halted across multiple plants. Dealers couldn’t process orders, suppliers couldn’t deliver parts, and customers were left in limbo. Weeks later, systems were still being restored.
Why? Because its security and IT structures had become fragmented—outsourced systems, vendor sprawl, and siloed operational control meant no single team had full visibility or authority to recover end-to-end.

That’s what lack of resilience looks like: a company paralyzed by its own complexity.

Now compare that with Maersk during the NotPetya attack in 2017. The world’s largest shipping firm was nearly wiped off the map in 45 minutes. But thanks to disciplined internal muscle memory and a deeply collaborative culture, Maersk rebuilt 45,000 systems in under 10 days. One surviving domain controller—discovered in an offline Ghana office—became the foundation for full recovery.
That wasn’t luck. That was resilience built through structured, empowered teams that could pivot under chaos.

Resilient teams:

• Blend generalists and specialists, preserving cross-disciplinary skill.

• Operate with clear command chains and pre-rehearsed recovery playbooks.

• Maintain trusted internal ownership over critical systems, even when vendors support the stack.

• Treat security as a business function, not a technical silo.

In modern enterprises, resilience is competitive advantage. The company that can get back online fastest, communicate confidently with customers, and resume operations after disruption will win—not just in reputation, but in market share.

The Structural Shift: Not a Collapse, But a Redefinition

This isn’t the end of cybersecurity jobs. It’s a re-architecture of the market:

• AI replaces repetitive Tier-1 tasks.

• Vendors consolidate services into managed platforms.

• Companies shrink internal teams to governance and oversight.

That means fewer “hands-on” defenders inside enterprises—and more reliance on third parties to execute. The risk: when something goes wrong, response times, forensics, and accountability all suffer.

Meanwhile, cyber professionals will need to reskill—moving into cloud architecture, automation engineering, vendor risk, and AI governance. The defenders who thrive will be those who understand both business risk and technical depth.

But to truly thrive, we need to rebuild that lost muscle memory—to create practitioners who can think horizontally across domains, connect dots, and adapt when the situation goes sideways.

That’s what makes a defender valuable. Not just a skillset—a mindset.

A Bold Prediction

Here’s my forward-looking take — and it’s one I’ll stand behind:

By Q3 of 2026, many of the cybersecurity jobs lost in 2024–2025 will return.
But they’ll come back into a market flooded with talent — and compensation will drop 15% to 25% below today’s levels.

Why? Because we’re watching a cycle play out. Layoffs are overcorrections driven by short-term cost pressure and AI hype. But as businesses rediscover that you can’t automate judgment, and you can’t outsource trust, they’ll start hiring again — just into a far more competitive environment.

The irony?
The very practitioners who were cut today will be rehired tomorrow — but for less.

This should serve as a warning to both executives and practitioners alike: the goal isn’t just job preservation, it’s capability preservation.
If we hollow out expertise now, rebuilding it later will be more expensive — and slower — than anyone budgets for.

What CISOs and Executives Must Do Now

Here’s the playbook I share with boards and peers:

1. Audit Your Workforce Map.
   Know exactly who’s doing what, where they sit, and what systems they touch. “We trust our MSSP” isn’t governance—it’s abdication.

2. Keep Strategic Capability In-House.
   Outsource tasks, not thinking. Always retain your incident response, architecture review, and intelligence functions internally.

3. Scrutinize Vendor Geography.
   Where is your vendor’s team actually located? What nations do they operate from? Would you be comfortable explaining that to regulators—or Congress?

4. Rebuild Muscle Memory.
   Cross-train your people. Let architects join SOC rotations. Let analysts shadow IR. Encourage multi-disciplinary skill development—it’s the best hedge against talent silos and layoffs.

5. Build for Resilience, Not Efficiency.
   Efficiency optimizes for today. Resilience prepares you for tomorrow. Invest in structures that allow teams to adapt, recover, and continue operations—because the breach isn’t an if, it’s a when.

6. Communicate the Real Cost.
   Tell your board: every dollar saved through outsourcing is a bet against your own resilience. You might save on salary—but lose in breach response, regulatory fines, and reputation.

The Bottom Line

The cybersecurity job market isn’t collapsing—it’s evolving at a velocity most organizations aren’t prepared for.

If we don’t confront this shift now, we’ll face a new paradox: America will spend billions on cyber defense, while the defenders themselves are off-shored, outsourced, and automated into irrelevance.

And that’s not just a business risk. That’s a national one.

So before the next round of layoffs, or the next outsourcing deal, ask yourself a simple question:

“Who’s really defending us?”

Because if the answer isn’t clear—you’re already exposed.

James Azar’s CISO Take

We can’t build cyber resilience on spreadsheets. Security isn’t just another cost center—it’s the backbone of trust in a digital economy. As we chase efficiency through layoffs and offshoring, we’re trading long-term stability for short-term optics.

The loss of multitasking muscle memory is the quiet killer of cyber agility. The lack of structured, cross-functional teams is the silent killer of resilience.

And here’s the kicker: by the time companies realize they’ve overcut, the talent will be back—but at a discount, with fewer incentives, and deeper burnout.

If the cybersecurity community doesn’t speak up now, policymakers will wake up only after the damage is irreversible.

Let’s treat this as the inflection point it is—and lead from the front.

🔚 Stay Cyber Safe, Security Gang.