The talent pool is real, and it's growing. There are approximately 143,000 individuals in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth moderately accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 - GOV.UK. That's good news if you're planning a defence or security team: supply is building. But demand is building faster.
The pressure shows in how hard roles are to fill. A comparison with the Cyber Security Skills 2024 report showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy AI Labour Market Survey 2025 (Gardiner & Theobald), GOV.UK / publishing.service.gov.uk. So the question isn't whether people exist. It's how you compete for the right ones, and how you free up your existing team to do the work only they can do.
Agents are good at the repeatable stuff: triaging alerts, sorting logs, running first-pass checks, drafting reports. That's a lot of the day for many security professionals. When a tool takes that load, the human day shifts towards judgement, context and decisions. The routine shrinks. The expert part grows.
That matters because the workforce is still relatively lean against demand, with roughly 143,000 people in the UK cyber security workforce Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 - GOV.UK. You can't hire your way out of every gap, so getting more from each skilled person is the practical move. Three skills grow in value as agents take the routine work.
An agent can flag a hundred anomalies. A person decides which one is an attacker and which is noise. As agents handle detection, the premium moves to the human who reads intent, weighs risk and calls the response. That judgement is hard to automate and harder to teach quickly, which is why it keeps rising in value.
Defence work rarely happens alone. It spans analysts, engineers, leadership and often external partners under strict handling rules. When agents draft the first version of a brief or incident note, the human skill becomes shaping it, pressure-testing it and sharing it safely with the right people. Clear, careful communication is a security control in its own right.
Someone has to set what good looks like for the agent, spot when it's wrong and keep it honest. That means understanding how the tool reasons, where it fails, and when a human must step in. This oversight skill is new to most job descriptions, and it's becoming one of the most useful things a defence professional can bring.
Start with the problem, not the tool list. Write the role around decisions the person will own, not just certifications. Test judgement with a real scenario: give a messy alert set and ask what they'd escalate and why. Ask how they'd check an AI tool's output, not just use it. That tells you more than a keyword-matched CV.
Move quickly, too. With 70% of cyber firms reporting at least one hard-to-fill vacancy AI Labour Market Survey 2025 (Gardiner & Theobald), GOV.UK / publishing.service.gov.uk, strong people don't sit on the market long. A slow process loses them. Build a short, sharp assessment, keep people informed, and clear security and vetting steps early so an offer can land without avoidable delay.
When routine work shifts to agents, you want to spend your time on the people, not the paperwork. We search a database of 15 million candidates, rank a shortlist fast, and manage recruitment end to end so your team keeps its focus on threat judgement and oversight. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Tell us what the role needs, and we'll surface people who fit.
