Healthy Salaries Await Young Professionals with Cybersecurity Training

If you are considering a career move into cyber security prevention and mitigation, CSO magazine predicts both rapid growth and increased earning power. Other data to suggest you may want to think about sending your kid to cybersecurity school instead.

U.S. News and World Report ranked a career in information security analysis eighth on its list of the 100 best jobs for 2015. They state the profession is growing at a rate of 36.5 percent through 2022. Average salaries nationally are $91,210, and significantly higher in big cities including San Francisco at $112,320, New York City at $120,460, and Sacramento at $142,200. The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report warns that the worldwide shortage of information security professionals is at 1 million openings, even as cyberattacks and data breaches increase each year. More than 209,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74 percent over the past five years, according to a Peninsula Press (a project of the Stanford University Journalism Program) analysis of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The demand for information security professionals is expected to grow by 53 percent through 2018. A recent CNBC story quotes a Rand Corporation study that estimates there are around 1,000 top-level cybersecurity experts globally vs. a need for 10,000 to 30,000. An information security analyst can move through the ranks as he gains real-world experience, and adds specialty technical credentials such as CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) and others. Whether you are just beginning your career or want to make a mid-career change cyber security holds both strong career growth and attractive compensation opportunities. Let us know your thoughts on this matter here at the Cloud and Cyber Security Center: http://cloudandcybersecurity.blogspot.com/