Demand for data security experts up 32% in July

34% of vacancies came from government agencies.

Job postings for data protection officers (DPO) jumped 32% YoY to a record-high of 119 in July 2019, according to a survey by the Data Protection Excellence (DPEX) Centre, the education arm of business management consultancy Straits Interactive.

Researchers gathered data from job placement platforms such as Indeed, Linkedin, Careers@Gov and Monster. The government mostly drove the increased demand, posting 34% of overall job vacancies, followed by the banking and finance sector at 19%. About 10% of postings came from the IT sector and both the business services and healthcare industries comprised 9%.

Fifty percent of these positions specifically involved performing the role of a data protection officer (DPO). Under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), all organisations are required to have a DPO, the release noted.

The two largest departments needing data protection expertise were IT/information security (44.5%) and legal and compliance (35.3%). A large majority of vacancies are for managerial (30%) and executive (11%) positions.

According to Kevin Shepherdson, CEO of Straits Interactive and head of the DPEX Centre, Singapore is on track to hit a 2017 prediction of a minimum of 10,000 data protection professionals by 2020.

Photo courtesy of Pexels.com.