A new report from McAfee Inc. details a critical skills shortage among cybersecurity professionals but suggests one way out may be hiring gamers to do the jobs.

The “Winning the Game” report released early Tuesday investigated key challenges facing information technology security organizations in terms of threats, technology investment and skills required to win the fight against cyberthreats.

The findings, based on a survey of cybersecurity professionals, uncovered disturbing trends in the industry as cyberthreats continued to grow. Some 46 percent of respondents believe that in the next year they will either struggle against an onslaught of cyberattacks or will simply be unable to defend against them.

Respondents to the survey overwhelming said that they needed to increase their IT staff on average by 24 percent. A full 84 percent said that it’s difficult to attract talent, with a lack of education and experience cited as a common factor.

“With cybersecurity breaches being the norm for organizations, we have to create a workplace that empowers cybersecurity responders to do their best work,” Grant Bourzikas, chief information security officer at McAfee, said in a statement. “Consider that nearly a quarter of respondents say that to do their job well, they need to increase their teams by a quarter, keeping our workforce engaged, educated and satisfied at work is critical to ensuring organizations do not increase complexity in the already high-stakes game against cybercrime.”

To address the skills and staff shortages, the report suggests two responses: automation and improved workplace tools such as gamification to hire and retain staff.

On the automation side, the report suggested pairing human intelligence with automated tasks and putting human-machine teaming in practice, since automated programs can free up cybersecurity staff by handling basic security protocols.

Gamification, the concept of applying elements of game-playing to nongame activities, was a notable highlight in the report. Some 57 percent of survey respondents said using games increases awareness and IT staff knowledge of how breaches can occur, with 77 percent of senior managers agreeing that their organization would be safer if they leveraged more gamification.

Taking the gamification concept into new territory, the report goes on to suggest that actual gamers, those who play online games, may be ideal targets for companies seeking to plug their existing skills gap. A commanding 92 percent of respondents said they believe gaming affords players experience and skills critical to cybersecurity threat hunting, while three-quarters of senior managers said they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience.

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