D.C.’s Cybersecurity Talent Pool Is Largest in the World — By a Long Shot
As a cybersecurity investor based in the Washington, D.C., metro area, I often talk about the size and quality of the talent pool in this region, as it’s well-known that D.C. has one of the largest cybersecurity talent pools in the nation.
Well, it turns out, that’s an understatement — by a long shot! According to a CBRE Insights report that came out this month, the D.C. metro area’s cybersecurity talent pool is much larger than any other metro area in the world. Coming in at more than 110,000 people, it’s almost twice the size of the next largest pool, New York City. The San Francisco area may have a lot of venture capital and a ton of product managers, but when it comes to cybersecurity, it only ranks #6 on the list, almost one-third the size of D.C.
When looking at the list, one may notice that many of the cities are some of the most populous cities in the world. This makes sense, but it also highlights the density of cybersecurity talent in the D.C. metro area, given that its general population is comparatively small. In addition, those in the cybersecurity industry may notice a city that looms large in many cyber professionals’ minds is conspicuously missing from the list — Tel Aviv, Israel. Given the population of the whole country of Israel is one-third the population of Delhi, India (#10 on the list), it’s hard for Tel Aviv to compete when comparing the absolute size of cybersecurity talent pools. So, let’s look at cyber talent density by city. Below is a chart showing the size of cyber talent pools per capita for the 10 cities compared in the CBRE study, in addition to Tel Aviv.
On a per capita basis, Tel Aviv comes in second place, having a cyber talent density similar to Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. Again, the D.C. metro area dwarfs all other cities, coming in with almost five times the cyber talent density than Tel Aviv.
This quantitative analysis provides numbers that prove what we, at DataTribe, have been saying for quite a while. If you’re building a cybersecurity company, there’s no better place to build it than in Washington, D.C.
