A national survey by the CSIR and the Cybersecurity Hub found that 62% of cybersecurity roles in South African organisations are partially or fully unfilled.
By Julie Noizeux Inder, enterprise channel manager: South Africa at Fortinet
That number is worth sitting with on Women’s Month, because women make up only a small share of the people even competing to fill those roles in the first place – and the reasons why start years before anyone applies for a job.
Many South African learners complete their schooling without ever being told cybersecurity is a career option, let alone shown what the work actually looks like. Girls are hit hardest by that gap, since exposure to technology as a hobby or a possible career still isn’t evenly distributed by the time learners are old enough to choose a subject stream.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 paints a similarly difficult regional picture, with 63% of surveyed organisations in sub-Saharan Africa reporting that they lack sufficient cybersecurity professionals, while a ResearchGate paper found South African organisations have been struggling more and more to recruit cybersecurity professionals as far back as 2023.
Even the best recruitment strategy sits at the tail end of a much longer pipeline – one shaped by years of career guidance, subject choices, social expectations and unequal access to technology, long before a CV is ever submitted. Building a larger, more diverse cybersecurity workforce means starting that exposure much earlier, and in far more classrooms.
The careers learners can’t see
Cybersecurity is still widely imagined as a narrow, highly technical profession, when in reality the field draws on a wide range of skills across very different roles. Learners can’t be expected to recognise themselves in careers they’ve never been shown or even heard of.
For girls, that unawareness starts earlier still. Many receive subtle messages from a young age about which subjects and professions are supposedly a natural fit for them, regardless of their actual interests or ability. By the time learners reach matric, plenty have already decided technology “isn’t for them” – others never had access to the subjects, equipment, teachers or extracurricular activities that might have challenged that belief in the first place.
Fortinet’s own 2026 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Global Research Report shows how entrenched the problem has become. Women make up just 26% of the average cybersecurity team globally – a figure unchanged since 2024 – and 75% of organisations now run structured initiatives to recruit them, up from 70% the year before.
Yet even with that additional effort, the share of organisations finding it harder to hire qualified women rose from 20% to 31% in a single year. Even employers actively trying to recruit women are fishing in a shallow pool, and the report suggests it’s getting shallower, not deeper.
A difficult curriculum reality
South Africa has taken an important step by gazetting Coding and Robotics for Grades R to 9. However, the Department of Basic Education has indicated the subject will be introduced progressively where capacity exists, rather than becoming compulsory across every school in the near future.
The reasons are understandable. The education system is operating under real resource and teacher constraints, and the Department’s 2025/26 Annual Performance Plan places necessary emphasis on improving foundational literacy and numeracy first. It also acknowledges the need to grow participation in STEM and prepare both educators and learners for a digital world.
The risk is that rolling out the subject based on existing capacity deepens the divide it’s meant to close. Schools with devices, connectivity and specialist teachers gain an obvious head start, while the schools with the fewest resources risk falling further behind.
Industry, academic institutions and NGOs all have a role to play in fixing this issue. Stretched schools need help introducing accessible activities that teach logic, pattern recognition, online safety and responsible technology use. Digital literacy is inherently valuable, but in the context of growing skills shortages, the point is also about making a career in cybersecurity visible to learners who would otherwise never encounter it.
Make the profession real
Exposure becomes far more powerful when learners meet people actually doing the work. Schools need access to professionals who can speak honestly about their careers – the routes they followed, the setbacks, the range of roles on offer. Teachers shouldn’t be left to introduce an unfamiliar career alone, without resources or training to back them up. This is exactly where industry partnerships can help: age-appropriate materials, mentorship, school clubs and free foundational training, rather than one more unfunded mandate handed to teachers who are already stretched thin.
Fortinet’s own Training Institute, academic partnerships and collaborations with organisations supporting women in cybersecurity are one example of what that kind of help looks like in practice. No single programme or organisation will close South Africa’s cybersecurity skills gap on its own. But every mentor who visits a classroom, every free course a learner completes, and every teacher given the tools to talk about this career honestly, moves the profession a little closer to view. This Women’s Day, that’s worth building towards: a Grade 8 girl somewhere in South Africa deciding, for the first time, that cybersecurity might actually be for her.