Insights from the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study show that the IT players in your organization may be the key to filling the looming cybersecurity workforce gap.

The survey was taken by 10,584 cyber and information security professionals in North America, and showed a projected 265,000 industry jobs will be left unfilled in 2022.

Practitioners back up that data, with 68 percent indicating their organizations had too few security professionals. Filling a gap of that size with qualified professionals is daunting, but the help may already be in your organization in the information technology department. In North America, 87 percent of survey respondents indicated that cybersecurity was not their first career – and of those professionals, 70 percent were working in IT before making the move to cybersecurity. Both job satisfaction and average salaries are higher in the cybersecurity field, compared to IT.

For more information on the study findings, view the GISWS infographic and report for North America .