Indian security teams report AI-linked cuts amid wider skills gaps

By Sophie Lindqvist

Two-thirds of Indian organizations (66%) report professional workforce reductions linked to AI, divided evenly between entry-level and more senior positions. The finding comes from Barracuda Research’s international survey of 2,000 IT and security decision-makers, released by Barracuda Networks as its Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report.

Across the international sample, 94% report cybersecurity skills gaps. Indian respondents record higher shares in two areas: 81% cite gaps related to AI risks, 13 percentage points above the 68% global result; 80% cite advanced identity and phishing threats, 13 points above 67% globally. Those threats include business email compromise, OAuth abuse and multifactor authentication bypass.

Where does the pressure show up?

Half of respondents say security professionals must support expanding digital operations without additional resources. Another 40% say business expectations exceed their team’s cybersecurity skills and tooling, while 35% say expectations exceed staffing capacity.

India reports greater difficulty scaling: 80% of Indian respondents say their teams struggle to meet expanding and evolving business needs, compared with 67% globally. Nearly a third of the global sample (32%) say they can protect the business only reactively rather than proactively.

Siroui Mushegian, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Barracuda, argues that AI is changing security faster than many teams can build the requisite skills, visibility and governance. He said: “Organizations need to reshape their security teams, combining the power of AI and automation with human expertise, judgement, and visibility. We must nurture these critical skills in the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, building new development pathways and opportunities for hands-on experience.”

Is AI replacing people?

Eighty-eight percent of Indian organizations report that AI already affects security roles or head count. The source does not say every affected organization cut jobs, nor does it establish that AI caused the reported 66% reductions; it records a reported link.

The incident-response model offers a more precise counterpoint: 62% use a shared decision-making model in which AI supports investigation and analysis while people retain context, judgement and final decisions. The evidence therefore supports changing responsibilities and selective augmentation, not wholesale replacement.

As organizations consolidate security tools and automate routine analysis and response, the source says human roles are shifting toward threat investigation, incident leadership, automation governance and business risk management. For job candidates, the practical emphasis is incident judgement, AI literacy, identity security, governance and communication, rather than technical expertise alone. The survey measures employer perceptions rather than job postings, wages or hiring volumes, so it cannot rank certifications, employers or particular pathways by demand.

Which skills carry the strongest demand signal?

More than two-thirds of Indian organizations (71%) need additional skills and expertise in incident response, decision-making under pressure and risk. Seventy-three percent report skills needs in strategic security leadership, including AI governance and translating technical risk into business impact.

The source also broadens the definition of a senior security professional: technical expertise remains essential, but employers increasingly combine it with AI literacy, identity security knowledge, governance awareness and strong communication skills as cybersecurity becomes a board-level business issue.

That definition carries a caveat for career entrants. If organizations automate entry-level work without creating clear development pathways, the source says shortages could deepen, leaving fewer practical routes into higher-skill roles. Yet the 66% reductions divide evenly between entry-level and more senior positions, while 62% still place final incident-response decisions with people.

The source provides no revision history, Indian subsample size, fieldwork dates or margin of error, so the precision of the India estimates remains untested. The next test is whether employers build the development pathways Mushegian calls for while retaining experienced staff for final incident decisions; the evidence so far establishes reported shortages, not their pace or scale.