The report takes its data from recruitment firms and says that staff placements increased last month – a continuing trend that started in the beginning of 2012. However, the report says that the growth rate was a modest one and is the slowest it has been since the beginning of the year. The growth rate for temporary jobs was down slightly.

The staff monitored eight different categories of permanent employees with six registered improvements that were demanded in April. Falling in line with trends, the largest growth was in IT.

With regards to permanent IT staff, sought after were SAP specialists, developers and side business analysts. CRM practitioners and CAD designers were found to be high in demand as temporary staff.

REC chief executive, Kevin Green, said:

“This month’s figures show growth in permanent jobs but at the slowest level since January. This highlights the fragile nature of the UK jobs market at present. Employer and consumer confidence are increasing and we anticipate more private sector jobs being created in the second half of the year.”

Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that online-based recruitment expenditure climbed by 0.8 per cent on the fourth quarter of last year – following a 1.4 per cent rise in the previous quarter.

Every job receives applications from 45 graduates according to national statistics, but that figure climbs to over 60 for IT vacancies.

Lee Clarke, a representative from a consulting firm which specialises in recruiting IT professionals, delivered a presentation to students at the university and said that much of the audience made the assumption that they would be leaving their course to walk straight into a £20,000 a year job.

There were few who paid sufficient attention to their module choices in order for them to impress upon employers. Mr Clarke said:

“What I am finding is a lot of graduates are not really geared up for how competitive the jobs market is. Universities are churning out a good number of computer science students, but not necessarily with the particular skills an employer needs.”

He added that it would be dangerous to see a job as being below them and that there were a rising number of jobs for websites, as high street stores have been shut down with a shift of emphasis to selling online. However, social media saw the biggest growth.

The university run a number of computing courses such as multimedia web design, interactive game design and information technology, with many students hoping to take on IT security jobs once they have completed their degree.

A mere six per cent of working contractors would think about a permanent role for their next job, according to the research. 56 per cent said they would be willing to wait eight weeks from one contracting job to another before looking at a full-time position.

The report suggests that IT contractors are satisfied in their roles, which could result in a higher number of people willing to consider contract work.

The director of the company that carried out the research said that a number of things are moving away from permanent towards temporary positions. He said:

“Many IT professionals will be looking to take advantage of the higher day rates found in contract roles and are comfortable in the knowledge that they are unlikely to experience long spells without a contract. In recent times, employers have had very high expectations of permanent candidates, looking for those that meet all of their criteria, but as more IT professionals switch to better paid contract roles they may struggle to find people to fill permanent positions if they aren’t more flexible.”

Further, it was found that 50 per cent of limited company contractors, along with other workers, said they preferred contracts lasting for a minimum of three months, while a lesser 24 per cent said they would work contracts based on a shorter duration.

This is the opinion of the International Telecommunication Union secretary-general Hamadoun Toure. He pinpointed the need for international business to encourage young women to choose technology as an area of study for their degree, as well as for companies to hire more women into IT vacancies.

A suggestion made by Mr Toure was that the best way to approach this is to show the potential careers to women by using role models.

He told delegates:

“ICT careers are not ‘too hard’ for girls. ICT careers are not unfeminine. And ICT careers are certainly not boring.”

Another method of making this a more global issue is to organise events not unlike Girls in ICT Day – an annual event, in which more than 70 countries participate, which sees key IT businesses and universities invite teenage girls to take part and find out more about what they could do with a degree in computing.

Other initiatives exist, including the Computer Club for Girls, which attempt to assist young girls in recognising the numerous ways technology can be employed in the areas they might typically enjoy, from music and fashion to games.

The belief is that such initiatives will see an increased interest in studying computing, entering the IT market and ultimately filling IT security jobs, among other roles in the industry.

There has been an added degree of strategy to the role of chief information security jobs, with an increased emphasis on risk-management and intelligence due to the fact that they are increasingly expected to anticipate possible issues and mitigate potential risks before they occur.

These are among the key findings from a survey conducted by IBM in which 130 CISOs from across the globe took part. The reasons behind the increased responsibility given to CISOs include understanding the importance of security’s role in mobile commerce and high-profile breaches in information security.

Report author and senior consultant at the IBM Center for Applied Insights David Jarvis said a “new class” of CISO leaders were emerging with the ability to articulate a strategic voice, enabling them to be more proactive in the organisation. He added:

“We see the path of the CISO now maturing in a similar pattern to the CFO from the 1970s, [and] the CIO from the 1980s – from a technical one to a strategic business enabler. This demonstrates how integral IT security has become to organisations.”

The IBM Security Systems VP of strategy Marc van Zadelhoff drew attention to the security challenges arising in what he called a “hyper-connected era”, explaining how such challenges are overcome by innovating developments in information security jobs.

Complex targeted attacks rose particularly high last year according to the report and businesses of all sizes are being affected.

Symantec’s security response manager, Liam O Murchu, said:

“Targeted attacks have changed. The picture that we had before of targeted attacks was they went after CEOs or other top people in a company, and they went after very large companies and government agencies. Targeted attacks are now being spread out and used in far more scenarios.”

It also highlighted the number of attacks per day, which had risen to 94 in November last year. In the past, targeted attacks have tended to affect large and public sector companies – but in 2011, 50 per cent of attacks were aimed at organisations with less than 2,500 employees. Almost 18 per cent of those attacks affected businesses with less than 250 staff, proving the pressure is beginning to mount for SMEs to look to IT security recruitment.

It is thought that cyber criminals attack smaller companies because they are part of a larger supply chain and have less security systems in place. Those attackers using malware and social engineering to access company data are also branching out, targeting smaller firms and people in non-senior roles.

The need for smaller businesses to put the right processes in place and the right people in cyber security jobs is becoming critical to their survival.

Richard Henson, one of the UK’s leading experts on information security, cautioned small to medium sized businesses that unless they educate themselves on cyber security, they could lose significant amounts of money and leave their businesses wide open to cyber attacks. It is said that cyber crime costs the UK around £27 billion annually, so the cost to companies cannot be underestimated.

Mr Henson lectures computing at the University of Worcester. He is promoting the Inform-ation Assurance for SME initiative that hopes to support small companies in developing protected systems. Likewise, he advocates using penetration testing, as hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated when accessing business systems. He said:

“Most small businesses now have digital information systems. Many are online, and taken together, SMEs form a large part of the national information infrastructure of the UK. However, the limited resources of smaller companies mean that they are often unable to focus as closely as they may wish on what may be perceived as peripheral activities, including information assurance.”

He went on to say that many SMEs could suffer a loss of business to major organisations if it is found that their IT security processes are lacking.

The need for talented people in cyber security jobs is critical to putting these measures in place.

At GCHQ, a government spokesperson revealed that Britain’s ability to cope with cyber attacks is lacking in comparison to other countries such as France, Germany and the US. Recently in the West Midlands, two teenagers were arrested in connection with the Scotland Yard security attack, whilst another hacktivist group responsible for cyber attacks on several government sites has announced it will continue with attacks planned on the Ministry of Justice and GCHQ.

These attacks have led to people within the cyber security industry questioning the processes in place to protect national security. The need for highly skilled personnel in IT security jobs is increasing, fuelled by the rise in cyber terrorists with adequate expertise to:

“potentially disrupt the process of democratic governance”.

According to The Independent, Professor Anthony Glees of Buckingham University’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said:

“The same sort of thing could cause chaos in an Olympic and Jubilee year.”

He went on to say that the growing issues were responsible for the Government’s move to allow security services to monitor personal email accounts.

One of the leading hacktivist groups, Anonymous, revealed to The Independent that it plans to carry out a long term campaign against the proposed email surveillance and the extradition of British nationals to the United States.

As growing pressure mounts on the Government and the British security services, those looking for cyber security jobs are likely to see an increase in vacancies.

The survey looked at the UK IT recruitment market in detail, covering a wide spectrum of 50 IT positions including IT security jobs. Over 8,000 job roles advertised nationally in the first three months of 2012 were analysed and compared to the level of advertised IT jobs last year for the same period.

Throughout the challenges experienced in the UK job market, the IT sector suffered less than others. As a result the findings are not surprising, as demand for IT roles such as cyber security jobs has continued to rise.

The report found that that overall the increase in demand for IT professionals was evening out but remaining optimistic moving forward. The statistics also highlighted that the amount of applicants applying to job roles has risen by 20 percent with an average of 194 applications received per IT vacancy. As confidence in the economy and job market has increased so has the number of candidates, with more choosing to change jobs.

Skill shortages are still apparent with PHP, Java, .NET and eCommerce expertise highly sought after. Looking forward, the IT job market looks to remain strong with employers focusing heavily on developing their IT infrastructure. For those seeking information security jobs this is great news, as the need for strong security processes remains high.

Anonymous, the hacktivist organisation, revealed that they would be working hard to take government websites down. Within days the hackers’ collective did just that with both the Home Office and Downing Street websites suffering DDoS attacks in early April.

These attacks highlighted the poor defences in place, which were unable to deal with even the most common methods of attack despite prior warning. The hackivists then went on to attack MI6 and GCHQ, as well as targeting Theresa May’s website in a worldwide campaign that also affected the sites of US and China governments and several large business sites.

The hacktivist campaign has an underlying political goal but is also fuelled by those that feel alienated by UK politics. One of the main drivers behind the Anonymous attacks is the government proposal to monitor everyone’s web activity in Britain.

The question asked by those experts and people in cyber security jobs is how can the government be entrusted with private and business data when they cannot keep their own websites protected? Key government staff with an IT focus have been appointed on a part time basis only and some of the leading experts in IT security are leaving Whitehall – Chris Chant, the G-Cloud Director, is to leave by the end of April.

Experts warn that the government needs to take a more cohesive approach to IT and data management with policies being driven by a realistic budget and with leadership backing.