AI Skills Are Now Essential for Cybersecurity Jobs: Here's Why You Need Them

AI Reshapes Cybersecurity Job Market

Cybersecurity hiring has slowed over the past six months as businesses reassess budgets amid a slowing U.S. economy, while the federal government has also reduced agency funding and positions. Despite this, the CyberSeek job board currently lists more than 514,000 open cyber positions.

A significant milestone has been reached: 10% of all available security positions now explicitly require candidates to have some type of artificial intelligence (AI) skill. According to CyberSeek, a joint initiative of NICE, Lightcast, and CompTIA, "Over the past 12 months, approximately 10% of employers recruiting for cybersecurity positions cited AI as a requirement. For other segments of employers, it may be an implied skill requirement not explicitly mentioned in the job listing."

While generative AI, agentic AI, and other technologies are viewed as ways to automate many manual security processes, the CyberSeek numbers, along with other research data, show that AI is driving cybersecurity professionals to quickly develop new skill sets to meet the evolving demands of these jobs.

AI Creates New Opportunities, Not Just Job Losses

There is concern that AI could eliminate entry- and junior-level positions, but research firm Gartner found that organizations wanting to deploy AI for security, especially in areas like their security operations center (SOC), still need skilled cyber professionals. These employees must be trained in AI and related areas to understand how virtual chatbots and other platforms work.

"Use of AI in security operations roles, like any other technology, will require new skills and training," according to Gartner. "Senior analyst roles and staff with programming/code-first skill sets are more likely to offer value to the SOC organization when considering how to use automation and AI on a day-to-day basis."

A Shifting Job Landscape Focuses on AI Skills

Cybersecurity experts note that while AI is changing the market and the skill sets needed, it's not yet clear how the technology will ultimately affect the job market and hiring. The threat of AI taking jobs has not materialized; instead, the technology is creating new positions that are only now emerging.

Diana Kelley, CISO at Noma Security, stated, "As the CyberSeek numbers point out, while some jobs will be replaced, others will evolve, and new jobs will be created such as AI researcher. I’ve also seen a number of postings for AI security prompt engineers that weren’t open headcount 12 months ago. This isn’t about AI replacing security experts, but about augmenting them."

The integration of AI into core business operations has significant implications for the workforce, including security practitioners, legal, compliance, and risk teams, which will now require upskilling in areas like AI technologies and data governance.

With research showing that 64% of organizations are planning to add AI-powered platforms to their security stack in the next year, professionals must start to cross-skill in these technologies, said Nicole Carignan, senior vice president for security and AI strategy at Darktrace.

"As AI becomes further embedded across the cyber landscape, it’s reshaping the structure, skillsets and strategies of all areas of the business, in particular the SOC," Carignan explained. "The tools used by attackers and defenders are evolving rapidly, and AI offers critical support in helping teams keep pace. When implemented responsibly, AI can augment the existing cyber workforce – expanding situational awareness, accelerating mean time to action, and enabling SOC teams to be more efficient, reduce fatigue, and better prioritize cyber investigation workloads."

Bugcrowd CEO Dave Gerry noted that while AI might seem like a worthy security investment for organizations with limited budgets, deploying these platforms and virtual chatbots still requires human oversight and supervision, necessitating investment in training.

"AI has the potential to level the playing field for these under-resourced operations, but only if it's deployed safely, securely, and with the right human oversight," Gerry said. "Without the combination of clear guardrails and experienced staff to monitor the outcomes, there is a risk of automation of failure at scale."

SOCs Need Skilled AI Workers

Cybersecurity workforce studies show that organizations have shifted away from hiring lots of workers and are now focused more on skills, especially regarding AI. While some see AI taking roles from younger workers, others remain skeptical since modern SOCs rely on technology that must be carefully managed, even with automated processes.

Diana Kelley pointed out that SOC analysts are now more likely to use AI-assisted hunting tools for analysis, which are faster and more accurate than manual log reviews. "AI security literacy and the ability to use AI to help improve security outcomes will be a core capability for cyber professionals moving forward," she added.

"As organizations adopt agentic AI systems – software agents that leverage large language models for 'reasoning' and then act through connected tools – the security stakes will rise," Kelley said. "Knowing how to secure their use will be one of the most valuable skill sets in the next decade. A security professional fluent in traditional cyber defense and AI threat modeling will be positioned not just to keep today’s SOC effective, but to safeguard the autonomous platforms of tomorrow."

When AI technologies are added to a SOC, they act as a force multiplier, automating tasks like triage and performing autonomous investigations, allowing security teams to pivot from reactive alert-handling to strategic initiatives like threat hunting, cyber resilience planning, and risk mitigation, according to Carignan.

"Realizing this benefit requires a workforce that understands how to effectively use, operationalize, govern, and most importantly, trust these technologies. It’s not enough to simply deploy an AI solution – security practitioners must understand how the underlying machine learning techniques function, what their strengths and limitations are, and how to evaluate their outputs," Carignan emphasized. "Without explainability and trust, AI risks exacerbating alert fatigue rather than solving it."

As more AI technologies enter SOCs and cybersecurity defenses, Carignan sees a future where security remains a human-centric occupation, provided employees have the necessary skills.

"GenAI has many helpful use cases in the SOC. However, if models are not rooted in transparency, explainability, privacy and control, hallucinations or inaccurate outputs may cause erroneous information to be fed into workflows, exacerbating issues of alert fatigue and burnout," Carignan added. "Ultimately, the future of the SOC, and the cybersecurity industry as a whole, will be built on human-AI collaboration. Organizations that succeed will invest in continuous education, embrace transparency and explainability in AI design, and empower their security teams with the knowledge to lead with – not just adopt – AI-powered defenses."