Where Are The Cybersecurity Jobs in 2026? Can you Still Break Into Cybersecurity in 2026?

Where are the cybersecurity jobs going to be in 2026? And with this current job market, can you even still break into cybersecurity as a beginner? These are the main two questions we'll be answering in today's video, specifically focusing on the cybersecurity job market in 2026. So, first I want to quickly address the elephant in the room. Is AI taking over cybersecurity jobs? Now, technically the answer for this is yes. Some of the most manual entry-level tasks that a typical early career cybersecurity professional would have done in the past are now being automated by different AI tools. And whenever people hear this, they think that there are just no more cybersecurity jobs out there, but that is just simply not the case. But the main thing to note is that companies are definitely going to be hiring fewer people to do the job that used to take maybe 10 people can now be done using five or seven people. So teams are definitely shrinking, but this is happening across every single industry because of AI. Now, is this a good or bad thing? Obviously, we all have our different opinions about that. I would love to hear yours in the comments below. But personally for me, let's just say when there is an actual security incident going on and you don't have enough people to be on the bridge line and fix those fires, AI is not going to be on the calls with these customers answering their questions to keep things under control. But I also want to note that this is happening across every single industry, not just tech, not just cybersecurity. Just a few years ago, companies were not trusting AI to actually do the work because there were so many false positives and so many things that they can get wrong or hallucinations. But nowadays with the latest GPTs and the latest models from Anthropic, Google, AI has definitely advanced faster than I think any of us could have thought. And we're basically seeing the consequences of that in the job market statistics right now. But based on what I've seen specifically in the cybersecurity job market, these are the four areas in cybersecurity that are going to be hiring the most in 2026. Cloud security, GRC or risk and compliance, identity and access management, and AI security. There's definitely been fewer cybersecurity entry-level roles. Now, I also want to note the fact that because tech is such a rapidly changing environment and industry in general, every 10 years or so, there's going to be a new technology that disrupts what a lot of people are doing in the sector. And right now, AI is one of those trends. But the most important thing for you as a cybersecurity professional or someone who is trying to break into cybersecurity is to focus on where the industry is headed and specifically on the high growth areas that are hiring based on industry trends, AI adoption by almost every single company in the world right now, remote work, and very unique rising cyber threats. So first let's cover cloud security. I feel like this one is very obvious for all of us. Most companies, if not every company, is now moving towards the cloud. Having your own data center on-prem is very expensive. And back then, companies wanted their own data centers because they didn't trust the cloud. But nowadays, cloud environments from the big cloud providers AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform are commonly going to be more secure than the typical data center. Unless you're in banking or the government, and you have very specific needs for security for your data. Generally, for most companies, using one of the big cloud providers to host everything is very common and also now very secure. But that also means that companies need people who are familiar with these cloud environments, who are familiar with the tools in them, how to protect the data, applications, and users using and accessing data in those cloud environments. The second role I mentioned is for GRC and risk compliance experts. Now, with any new technology or new sector, there's going to be regulations, compliance, regulatory requirements that governments and institutions are going to set up once they become a little bit more mature. And that is exactly where AI is headed, which means more companies are going to need risk and compliance experts. They're going to need GRC analysts. They're going to need auditing professionals. And even better, if you're also familiar with using AI technologies as more and more companies are going to have to get certifications and go through different internal and external audits to prove to their customers that they're doing the right thing with their data and that they're following certain standards or guidelines to protect their data or their users. And GRC is a perfect role for anyone who is interested in the non-technical side of cybersecurity. So not everyone has to be, you know, a hacking genius or a coding genius to break into cybersecurity in 2026. The third highest demand job in cybersecurity is going to be IAM or identity and access management roles. Right now for companies, it's more important than ever for them to understand who has access to what data, who is who, if they are who they say they are, their controls to identify who a user is. But nowadays, it's not only just users accessing applications, accessing data, it's also AI bots. And it's even more important that AI tools only have access to the data and the tools that they require access to. And that is why IAM is going to be even more important in the era of AI. And not to mention the extra controls that need to be put in place to make sure that happens, to make sure that identity and access are properly managed across an entire organization. And if you're in an organization with hundreds of thousands of employees or millions of users, that is a very large task. So this is going to be a huge area for cybersecurity growth and a lot of cybersecurity hiring. And last but not least, of course, is number four, which is AI security jobs or red teamers and threat hunters. Last year, I got the chance to interview the head of AI red team at Microsoft, as well as a few members from his team. And if you're interested in ethical hacking or offensive security, this is an area that you should be focusing on. Understanding what it takes to test an AI model, the unique threats that target these models and their data, and how to make them more secure. AI security and AI red teaming in general has really just started to blow up in the last few years and is only going to grow more in 2026. So, if you're interested in ethical hacking, I would take extra time to learn and understand different AI models, what makes them different, and the unique vulnerabilities that they face. And if you're trying to break into cybersecurity or level up your career, here's the hard truth. Doing projects isn't enough anymore. If no one can see them, they don't help your career growth. This is how you turn one day I'll build my cybersecurity career into day one. I'm going to show you how to build a clean, professional cybersecurity project portfolio using Hostinger website builder. One of the fastest and most affordable ways to get online. This is perfect for students, career switchers, creators, and security professionals who want their work to actually be seen. Everything lives in one place: the website builder, hosting, a domain, professional email, and marketing tools. You can follow along using hostinger.com/sandra, which gives you access to Hostinger's New Year sale. When you get to pricing, I recommend the business plan. I'm choosing the 48-month option because it's cheaper than monthly, includes a free domain, gives you extra months free, and locks in the lowest price long term. Plus, with a New Year discount, the price drops a lot and you can stack another 10% off by using code Sandra at checkout. I'm building my website through Hostinger's AI website builder. I enter my site name, something like cybersecurity portf...

focusing on the cyber security job market in 2026. So, first I want to quickly address the elephant in the room. Is AI taking over cyber security jobs? Now, technically the answer for this is yes. Some of the most manual

entry-level tasks that a typical early career cyber security professional would have done in the past are now being automated by different AI tools. And whenever people hear this, they think that there are just no more cyber security jobs out there, but that is

just simply not the case. But the main thing to note is that companies are definitely going to be hiring less people to do the job that used to take maybe 10 people can now be done using five or seven people. So teams are

definitely shrinking, but this is happening across every single industry because of AI. Now, is this a good or bad thing? Obviously, we all have our different opinions about that. I would love to hear yours in the comments below. But personally for me, let's just

say when there is an actual security incident going on and you don't have enough people to be on the bridge line and fix those fires, AI is not going to be on the calls with these customers answering their questions to keep things

under control. But I also want to note that this is happening across every single industry, not just tech, not just cyber security. Just a few years ago, companies were not trusting AI to actually do the work because there were

so many false positives and so many things that they can get wrong or hallucinations. But nowadays with the latest GPTs and the latest models from Enthropic, Google, AI has definitely advanced faster than I think any of us could have thought. And we're basically

seeing the consequences of that in the job market statistics right now. But based on what I've seen specifically in the cyber security job market, these are the four areas in cyber security that are going to be hiring the most in 2026.

Cloud security, GRC or risk and compliance, identity and access management, and AI security. There's definitely been less cyber security entry- level rules. Now, I also want to note the fact that because tech is such a rapidly changing environment and

industry in general, every 10 years or so, there's going to be a new technology that disrupts what a lot of people are doing in the sector. And right now, AI is one of those trends. But the most important thing for you as a cyber

security professional or someone who is trying to break into cyber security is to focus on where the industry is headed and specifically on the high growth areas that are hiring based on industry trends, AI adoption by almost every

single company in the world right now, remote work and very unique rising cyber threats. So first let's cover cloud security. I feel like this one is very obvious for all of us. Most companies if not every company is now moving towards

the cloud. Having your own data center on prem is very expensive. And back then, companies wanted their own data centers because they didn't trust the cloud. But nowadays, cloud environments from the big cloud providers AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform are commonly going

to be more secure than the typical data center. Unless you're in banking or the government, and you have very specific needs for security for your data.

Generally, for most companies, using one of the big cloud providers to host everything is very common and also now very secure. But that also means that companies need people who are familiar with these cloud environments, who are familiar with the tools in them, how to

protect the data, applications, and users using and accessing data in those cloud environments. The second role I mentioned is for GRC and risk compliance experts. Now, with any new technology or new sector, there's going to be regulations compliance regulatory

requirements that governments and institutions are going to set up once they become a little bit more mature.

And that is exactly where AI is headed, which means more companies are going to need risk and compliance experts.

They're going to need GRC analysts. They're going to need auditing professionals. And even better, if you're also familiar with using AI technologies as more and more companies are going to have to get certifications and go through different internal and

external audits to prove to their customers that they're doing the right thing with their data and that they're following certain standards or guidelines to protect their data or their users. And JC is a perfect role for anyone who is interested in the

non-technical side of cyber security. So not everyone has to be you know a hacking genius or a coding genius to break into cyber security in 2026. The third highest demand job in cyber security is going to be I am or identity

and access management roles. Right now for companies it's more important than ever for them to understand who has access to what data who is who if they are who they say they are their controls to identify who a user is. But nowadays

it's not only just users accessing applications accessing data it's also AI bots. And it's even more important that AI tools only have access to the data and the tools that they require access to. And that is why IM is going to be

even more important in the era of AI. And not to mention the extra controls that needs to be put in place to make sure that happens to make sure that identity and access are properly managed across an entire organization. And if

you're in an organization with hundreds of thousands of employees or millions of users, that is a very large task. So this is going to be a huge area for cyber security growth and a lot of cyber security hiring. And last but not least,

of course, is number four, which is AI security jobs or red teamers and thread hunters. Last year, I got the chance to interview the head of AI red team at Microsoft, as well as a few members from his team. And if you're interested in

ethical hacking or offensive security, this is area that you should be focusing on. Understanding what it takes to test an AI model, the unique threats that target these models and their data, and how to make them more secure. AI

security and AI red teaming in general has really just started to blow up in the last few years and is only going to grow more in 2026. So, if you're interested in ethical hacking, I would take extra time to learn and understand

different AI models, what makes them different, and the unique vulnerabilities that they face. And if you're trying to break into cyber security or level up your career, here's the hard truth. Doing projects isn't enough anymore. If no one can see them,

they don't help your career growth. This is how you turn one day I'll build my cyber security career into day one. I'm going to show you how to build a clean, professional cyber security project portfolio using Hostinger website

builder. One of the fastest and most affordable ways to get online. This is perfect for students, career switchers, creators, and security professionals who want their work to actually be seen.

Everything lives in one place. The website builder, hosting, a domain, professional email, and marketing tools.

You can follow along using hostinger.com/sandra, which gives you access to Hostinger's new year sale. When you get to pricing, I recommend the business plan. I'm choosing the 48month option because it's cheaper than monthly, includes a free domain, gives you extra months free, and

locks in the lowest price longterm. Plus, with a new year discount, the price drops a lot and you can stack another 10% off by using code Sandra at checkout. I'm building my website through Hostinger's AI website builder.

I enter my site name, something like cyber security portfolio, then describe what I do, showcasing hands-on cyber security projects, labs, writeups, and blog content. Seconds later, I have a full website layout. From there, it's all drag and drop. No coding, and no

stress. I add a project section for things like SIM labs, cloud security builds, detection engineering, and incident response case studies. The AI writer helps me document everything clearly and the AI image and logo tools make the site look polished fast. Then

to actually help people find my site, Hostinger also includes built-in AI SEO tools. And if you want to monetize, you can start a blog, create a link in bio page, or sell digital products or appointments with zero transaction fees.

My own day one started when I stopped keeping my work hidden and put it online. If you're ready to do the same, head to hostinger.com/sandra.

Grab the new year sale and use code Sandra for an extra 10% off. Everything will be linked in my description and thank you to Hostinger for sponsoring this portion of the video. Okay, so with these four main hiring areas in terms of

skills and jobs, what are the actual sectors and industries that are hiring for these roles the most? Now these are going to be finance, healthcare, government and contractor roles and last but not least tech startups. Now you will notice that big tech is not

necessarily on the list and again industries change all the time but pre-COVID and even during co the tech industry and big tech in general were doing the most hiring out of every sector but now the scales have kind of

tipped a bit where it's mostly the big stable sectors that are actually hiring the most. But not only are employers looking for the hard skills like practical skills and cloud security, zero trust, instant response, using SIM and XDR tools, they're also looking for

soft skills. This is something that AI can never replace. And this is also why I don't think human employees are going anywhere in the next few decades. Even though half the articles I read online are very doomsday about this, there's

still going to be a need for the cyber security analyst, for the incident responder, for the ethical hacker, for the GRC analyst. And the biggest reason is because of human problem solving and soft skills. So, while you're focusing

on building your technical project portfolio and everything that comes with it, which by the way, I also recently released my technical cyber security projects course that would be perfect for your cyber security portfolio and your resume. You can find it linked in

my description. But on top of those technical skills, tools, and projects, you also want to focus on your communication skills, your problem solving skills. These are the things that will come across during an interview that can really make a

difference when it comes to moving along to the next steps or the offer stage.

So, the final question of the day, most important question of this video, can you still break into cyber security in 2026? And my answer is yes, you can. But that doesn't mean it's going to come easy. Yes, it's harder to land in entry-

level job in cyber security, but there are still so many routes that you can get into through apprenticeships, internships, rotational programs, of course, getting your entry- level certifications like your CompTIS Security Plus, working on hands-on technical projects in labs like the ones

linked in my description, and having a strong cyber security project portfolio that shows real world skills and real tools that companies actually use to make yourself a better job candidate.

All right, so that is it for this video. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. Don't forget to check out Hostinger to host your very own cyber security project portfolio and

check out their offer through the link in my description. Hope you guys are having a great start to your 2026. I would love to hear from you. What skills are you guys focusing on learning this year? Or what specific goals or

milestones are you trying to hit? Feel free to drop them below as well. I'm so excited to start posting more this year.

Don't forget to like and subscribe if this video was helpful as it really does help out the channel. I'm going to try to start posting videos bi-weekly, but don't forget to follow along in more real time on my LinkedIn, Instagram,

Discord, all linked in my description as well. And hopefully I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.

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