Monday Morning Impact – July 24

CompTIA: Overall Tech Employment Loses Ground

Technology companies added workers while tech occupations throughout the broader economy fell back in June, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based trade association.

Tech sector companies increased headcount by 5,348 jobs last month, CompTIA’s analysis reveals. Among the six top level tech occupation categories three show positive gains through the first half of 2023 – IT and custom software services and systems design; PC, semiconductor and components manufacturing; and cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting.

Tech occupations throughout the economy declined by an estimated 171,000 last month. The unemployment rate for tech occupations edged up to 2.3%, below the national figure of 3.6%.

Employer job postings for future hiring declined modestly in June, to just under 236,000. Nearly 49,000 tech job postings offered remote work or hybrid work arrangements as an option, while about 21,000 job postings were for positions related to artificial intelligence. Employer job postings for AI reached a new high point as a percentage of emerging tech postings (38%) and overall tech job postings (9%).

“The usual balancing act of weighing short-term monthly fluctuations in the data with longer-term projections comes into play,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “The latest tech employment figures do lag some, but the underlying fundamentals remain unchanged. All signs point to a continuation of the growth trajectory for the tech workforce.”

Employer hiring intent spans job roles across disciplines including software developers and engineers (64,957 June job postings), IT project managers, data analysts and related occupations (42,105), IT support specialists (22,898), systems analysts and engineers (17,029) and data scientists (15,131).

Among specific markets the Washington, D.C., metro area led the nation in total tech job postings for the month (16,452) and in the month-over-month increase in postings from May to June (+1,560). New York City, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago rounded out the top five metro areas with the largest number of tech job postings in June.

Channel Impact^®
Although the news is clearly mixed, the tech sector, itself, appears to be faring better than a number of other industries.

Hughes Partners with Netskope to Launch Managed SASE Solution for Small to Medium Enterprises

Hughes Network Systems and Netskope have announced a joint SASE solution that combines Hughes managed services expertise with Netskope’s Security Service Edge (SSE) capabilities. The solution bundles Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) with elements of a cloud-delivered security posture, along with an option to integrate with existing SD-WAN deployments using Netskope SSE.

The solution includes SASE features such as Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Secure Web Gateways, Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) plus options such as Managed Detection and Response (MDR). A 24/7 security operations center (SOC), along with incident response and alert prioritization is also provided.

“Hughes Managed SASE makes it turn-key to manage company data securely, wherever it’s transmitted across a growing perimeter of endpoints that employees need to access in the office, on the road and remotely,” said Dan Rasmussen, senior vice president, enterprise division at Hughes. “Our cloud-first security solution meets companies where they are today with a full SASE implementation or as an add-on to an existing SD-WAN deployment with a clear path to a full-SASE solution at their own pace.”

“This new partnership between Hughes and Netskope brings together industry-leading pedigrees to deliver a fully managed, full-stack SASE platform,” said Dave Rogers, SVP Global Alliances and Channel Sales at Netskope. “As organizations navigate the challenges associated with a work-from-anywhere environment, they are turning to SASE solutions to secure data and people anywhere. Our partnership is focused on helping to accelerate digital transformation and safely enable innovations such as generative AI, all while preserving network performance and business productivity.”

The initiative is designed for small and mid-sized enterprises headquartered in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Channel Impact^®
In the midst of a wide variety of tools available across the broad market, this offering is intended to combine the capabilities that protect data and applications through a customizable cloud security solution.

Sophos and Cysurance Offer Fixed-Price Cyber Insurance to Organizations Using Sophos MDR

Sophos, a UK-based cybersecurity company, has announced a new partnership with Cysurance that insures, warranties, and certifies security solutions. The partnership provides fixed-price cyber insurance to U.S.-based organizations using Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR).

“As cyberthreats increase in complexity and velocity, MDR is quickly becoming an essential requirement for organizations to manage their cybersecurity posture. Most organizations simply can’t keep up with the evolving threat landscape, as evidenced by the 59% of U.S. security defenders who say today’s threats are too advanced for their organizations to deal with on their own,” said Raja Patel, senior vice president of products and managed services at Sophos. “Cysurance recognizes this and the value that Sophos’ 24/7 threat detection and response experts provide to mitigate cyber risk.”

The Cysurance policies for Sophos MDR users support all industry sectors in the U.S., regardless of number of employees or endpoints. Four plans, ranging from $275,000 to $3.2 million in total coverage – including ransomware coverage – are available.

“The lack of comprehensive and integrated security strategies largely explains why cyber insurance policy fees are rising while coverage limits are declining,” said Kirsten Bay, co-founder and CEO at Cysurance. “Those without defense-in-depth strategies are in great trouble.”

This is the latest in a series of cyber insurance partnerships for Sophos, which already this year announced deals with Cowbell and Measured Analytics and Insurance. Its partnership with Cysurance is specifically designed for organizations using Sophos MDR.

Channel Impact^®
Cyber insurance is emerging as a very important component for the protection of corporate resources. Alliances such as this one are becoming increasingly common.