Status: FINAL RELEASE

Published: 04MAY2026

The CyberPath Professionalisation Pilot, in partnership with The Evolved Group, delivered a national consultation and research program throughout March and April, combining deep qualitative engagement with broad industry input. 

This included 33 targeted engagements across focus groups and interviews, alongside 284 open submissions and 200+ survey responses, capturing insights from across the cybersecurity ecosystem. 

Participants included cyber security professionals, emerging talent, career changers, employers (enterprise and SMB), educators and training providers, as well as government and industry representatives—providing a diverse, cross-sector view of workforce challenges, pathways and future capability needs. 

All inputs were analysed using a combination of AI-driven text analytics and human review, enabling thematic, sentiment and comparative analysis across stakeholder groups to identify key priorities and risks for the professionalisation model. 

The integration of qualitative insights, structured consultation and large-scale industry feedback provides a robust, evidence-based foundation to inform the design of CyberPath’s national professionalisation framework. 

Key Consultation Insights

• Strong industry engagement and trust, with 284 submissions received and 73.2% of respondents expressing trust and positive sentiment, indicating strong support for professionalisation 

• Career pathways identified as the top priority, raised by ~45% of stakeholders, highlighting the need for clearer, structured progression across the cyber workforce 

• Strong preference for competency-based assessment, with industry favouring practical, real-world validation (e.g. portfolios, simulations) over traditional certification models 

• Role ambiguity remains a systemic challenge, with inconsistent definitions across organisations impacting workforce effectiveness and mobility 

• Cyber roles are diverse, hybrid and non-linear, requiring flexible frameworks that reflect real-world practice, particularly in SMEs 

• Barriers to entry remain significant, including high certification costs and unrealistic experience requirements for entry-level roles 

• Education and training are not consistently producing job-ready talent, reinforcing the need for stronger alignment between industry and learning pathways 

• Industry strongly supports inclusive and non-traditional entry pathways, including career changers and adjacent professions 

   

Implications 

The findings demonstrate a clear and urgent opportunity to establish a nationally consistent, industry-aligned professionalisation framework that connects skills, roles and career pathways. 

Such a framework has potential to address fragmentation, improve hiring confidence, and enable a more accessible, scalable and future-ready cyber security workforce.