67% of Security Leaders Struggle to Meet Business Needs | CSO Online
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By: John Leyden, Senior Writer
Text:
67% of security leaders say their teams struggle to meet business needs.
News: Nov 3, 2026
3 mins
Growing AI demands and compounding skills gaps are taxing the resources and effectiveness of cybersecurity teams.
Credit: BalanceFormCreative / Shutterstock
AI, identity-based attacks, and expanding digital operations are putting pressure on already overstretched cybersecurity teams.
Security vendor Barracuda’s Cybersecurity Skills Gap report also found that security teams are struggling to keep pace with expanding responsibilities. The vast majority of the 2,000 IT and security decision-makers surveyed report cybersecurity skills gaps.
In particular, the most common challenges are linked to:
- AI-related risks (68%)
- Advanced identity and phishing threats (67%), including:
- Business email compromise
- OAuth abuse
- Multi-factor authentication bypass
Two-thirds (67%) of respondents say security teams are under pressure and struggling to scale to meet evolving business needs. Half say their security professionals are expected to support growing digital operations without additional resources.
56% report a reduction in security head count linked to AI, split evenly between entry-level and more senior roles. As AI takes on more routine analysis and response activities, human roles are shifting toward (higher value) threat investigation, incident leadership, automation governance, and business risk management.
"AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape faster than many security teams can build the necessary skills, visibility, and governance," said Siroui Mushegian, senior vice president and chief information officer at Barracuda. "Organizations need to reshape their security teams, combining the power of AI and automation with human expertise, judgment, and visibility."
Hiring challenges:
CSO parent company Foundry’s forthcoming Security Priorities report found that:
- Cloud security (35%)
- Securing agentic AI technology (34%)
- Securing AI/machine learning-enabled technology (30%)
topped the areas CSOs felt their teams needed to become more skilled and knowledgeable about to meet overall corporate security objectives.
Underlining the difficulty of this ambition, the report found that cloud security architects, AI security specialists, and forensics analysts were the most difficult cybersecurity roles in which to find suitable applicants.
Accessing the cost of the skills gap:
Separately, technology-focused online learning...