AI is making it harder to get a cybersecurity job

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/05/18/ai-is-making-it-harder-to-get-a-cybersecurity-job

Publish Date: 2026-05-18 18:00:00

AI tools are helping bad guys automate bigger, faster, more sophisticated attacks. FBI data show cybercrime losses in the U.S. surged by more than 25% last year.

AI itself is also being used to defend systems, but many organizations have chronically underinvested in security. And industry groups have long pointed to a gaping shortage of people with the skills to fend off hackers and phishers.

Now, a lot of job-seekers trying to break into the field are hitting a firewall.

Megan Osteen is one of them. She’s wanted to work in tech pretty much forever.

“My dad was a software engineer, and I just remember, a lot of my childhood, I would sit in his office with him, and he would explain to me what he was doing, like how it worked,” she said.

Life sort of got in the way of her plans. She left college when she became a mom and grabbed the work she could, most recently as a behavioral therapist for kids with autism.

When her dad died a few years ago, she decided it was time to make a career leap. She kept hearing cybersecurity was the way to go, “because of the projected job growth and the demand within the field. It seemed promising.”

She took online courses and, in February, earned her first cybersecurity certification. She’s been looking for jobs, but not finding many opportunities.

“I’m trying to find ways to keep pushing forward and not get stuck in the mud,” she said. “But it has been truly just very, very difficult. I just feel like it was false advertisement.”

Cybersecurity jobs have been the focus of a decades-long workforce development push: “Learn to Code,” but with the urgency of a national security imperative.

It spawned a cottage industry of federal and state programs, for-profit bootcamps, certifications, and online career coaches like Evan Lutz.

“The thing that initially gave me rise on social media is that I can speak very quickly with concise ideas,” he said.

Lutz quit his job teaching high school math in 2019 to launch a career in…

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