BITS said it will double its workforce as new hybrid and remote working models have triggered ‘spiralling demand’ for its security services.
Kilkenny-based cybersecurity company Business IT Solutions (BITS) has said it plans to create 20 new jobs over the next three years.
The expansion will help meet what BITS CEO Gavin Dixon called a “massive growth in demand for cybersecurity services in the broader Kilkenny area”.
Recruitment is already underway to fill some positions, and new roles will include project engineers, helpdesk analysts, security specialists and support staff.
The company’s staff headcount is expected to double from 20 to 40 through a combination of recruitment and M&A activity. Dixon is moving into the CEO role, while Paul Byrne has been chosen to take over as managing director.
According to Dixon, the company is “currently in talks to acquire an IT company in the greater Dublin region”, which will help it to meet demand from Dublin-based clients.
Dixon also said that expansion plans were driven by a need to address the challenges faced by companies moving to hybrid working models.
“This new hybrid arrangement brings all sorts of challenges to companies, who need to adapt their security protocols in order to safely accommodate the change.”
He said the company had experienced “spiralling demand” for cloud and security services, particularly in the financial and professional services sectors.
“During the early days of the pandemic, in March 2020, so many of our clients moved to remote working overnight and we had to react instantly, creating that secure remote working environment for their teams by implementing a ‘work from home’ strategy for businesses who had never done so before.”
Dixon added that with many workers now moving back into the office and many embracing hybrid work arrangements, his clients are reviewing their workers’ security situations once again.
“On the one hand, you have people going back into offices and starting up PCs that literally haven’t been used in 19 months, so their overall technology requirements need to be urgently reviewed. And, on the other, more and more employers are changing over to laptops-only to support flexible working arrangements which, again, has implications for data breaches and cyberattacks,” he explained.
“The increase in phishing emails we saw during the pandemic continues and it is so important that companies have in place a clear policy for their staff around how to identify these emails, how to respond and who to report them to.”
This echoes statements made by other cybersecurity experts, who have also warned of the skills shortage in the infosec industry in Ireland. Recently, several Irish universities came together on an €8m Cyber Skills project to tackle this skills gap by developing courses to encourage people into the industry.
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