Jobseekers, listen up: Cybersecurity ought to be atthe top of your skills list.

The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) reported thatthere’s a shortage in cybersecurity talent, acrossindustries and across the globe, with 82 percent of ITprofessionals saying that there’s a shortage of people equippedwith cybersecurity skills.

SHRM cited a number of reports that indicate not only thatemployers are running out of candidates with suitable skills, butthe cost of that lack is rising. A Ponemon Institute study put thecost of a data break for respondent companies in the study at $4million in 2016 — up from $3.79 million just last year. Why? A lackof cybersecurity skills isdamaging companies.

And companies can’t find enough skilled candidates to fillopenings, despite higher salaries; a Burning Glass Technologiesreport said that in 2015, 209,000 cybersecurity jobs went unfilledin the U.S. And Intel Security, which authored the global report“Hacking the Skills Shortage,” said that respondents to their study“estimate an average of 15 percent of cybersecurity positions intheir company will go unfilled by 2020.”

Computer skills are topping the list in other areas, too;regardless of their primary job focus, candidates who can code are more in demand byHR departments than candidates who can’t. But here too there’s ashortage, despite the fact that salaries are also on the rise forcoders.

In a Burning Glass Technologies study conducted for Oracle, jobsthat include coding skills pay an average of $84,000, compared withjust $62,000 for jobs that don’t require coding skills. And theseare jobs outside the information technology department.

Students might be taking coding classes, but they’re notflocking to cybersecurity — and the training they’re getting inschools might not cut it for cybersecurity, anyway. Only 23 percentof respondents in the Intel reports said that education programsare preparing students for jobs in cybersecurity.

What does work? The report pointed to “nontraditional methods ofpractical learning, such as hands-on training, gaming andtechnology exercises and hackathons.”

According to the National Science Foundation, the percentage ofhigh school students taking computer science courses has fallenover the last 20 years, despite the rise of the computer in justabout every field. Now only 19 percent of high schoolers in theU.S. pursue computer science — if that doesn’t change, the existingshortage is likely to grow in years to come.