Employers in the United States advertised 235,786 cybersecurity openings between January and September of 2026, a 26.4% retreat from the 320,210 posted across the same nine months a year earlier. CyberSN, the staffing and workforce intelligence firm behind the count, says it is the lowest tally for that stretch in the four years it has tracked. Set against 2024 instead of 2025, the shortfall narrows to about 4%, which reframes the year: the field gave back the ground it gained in a strong 2025, then slid a little further. September beat its own 2025 figure, the only one of the nine months to do so, but by under 400 listings — too slight to read as a turnaround.
Engineers and analysts who build and monitor controls still account for the biggest block of demand, roughly four in ten listings, but that share keeps eroding. Governance, risk and compliance work has absorbed much of the difference, and security lawyers handling privacy and regulatory matters were the only one of the ten largest categories to post more listings in 2026 than in 2025. Defense dropped from 47.1% of postings to 41.5%, while the legal and audit-facing share climbed from 9.4% in 2023 to 14.8% this year. Penetration testing listings fell by nearly half.
CISO listings dropped 38.9% from 2025’s record, back near 2024 levels, then rebounded 19.5% between the second and third quarters. Deidre Diamond, CyberSN’s chief executive, blames churn at the top of the org chart rather than any fading appetite for security leaders. When a chief executive, finance chief or another sponsor departs, she said, openings freeze and budgets get reworked, because security hires need champions and budget approval to move. The 2026 planning lesson: these count what employers advertised, not people hired.
