LONDON: UK Government Communications Headquarters has said that they are losing their Web experts to companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon because the intelligence base in Cheltenham does not pay enough.
Iain Lobban said it could not offer the same money and they were regularly losing staff due to better perks offered elsewhere.
In the committee's annual report, Lobban said he can offer his staff a "fantastic mission" but struggles with salaries, The Telegraph reports.
"I need some real Internet whizzes in order to do cyber and I am not even sure they are even on the contractor market, so I need to work on that," the paper quoted him, as saying.
"They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever. And I can't compete with their salaries. I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can't compete with their salaries," Labban said.
"I probably have to do better than I am doing at the moment, or else my internet whizzes are not going to stay and we do have a steady drip, I am afraid," he said.
"Month-on-month, we are losing whizzes who'll basically say: 'I'm sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else," he added.
GCHQ is an intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces.
The committee said they were concerned about GCHQ's inability to retain a "suitable cadre of internet specialists to respond to the threat" and urged the agency to investigate whether a system of bonuses for specialist skills should be introduced.
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