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Download: 2020 cybersecurity salary survey

The 2020 Cybersecurity Salary Survey provides insight into the details related to cybersecurity compensation. Over 1,500 security professionals completed the survey. Today you can access the aggregated and analyzed 2020 Cybersecurity Salary Survey Results and gain insight to the main ranges and factors of current cybersecurity salaries.

2020 cybersecurity salary survey

Using the survey results, any individual can go to the section relevant for his or her role and learn how their salary benchmarks against the respective range and factors, and then utilize this knowledge in any decision making process.

Key findings

  • Geolocation matters. Security analysts in NAM get a significantly higher salary than their counterparts in the EMEA and APAC, with more than 80% earning between 71K and 110K, in contrast to less than 35% in EMEA and 21% in APAC.
  • Degree doesn’t guarantee higher compensation. All analyzed positions feature a similar salary range distribution for both employees with or without a degree in computer science or a related engineering filed.
  • Banking and finance lead with payment range and distribution for both management and individual contribution positions.
  • Quality beats experience. Surprisingly, across all analyzed positions researchers found both individuals with little experience at the top of the payment curve and seasoned veterans at its bottom.
  • Pivoting pays. Individuals that pivoted from an IT position to a cybersecurity position earn more than their peers that started out in cybersecurity.
  • Bonuses are common practice. With the exception of security analysts, all other positions include periodic bonuses with annual 1%-10% as the leading pattern.
  • Women are hard to find. There is a significant shortage of women in security positions. The highest percentage is in the 20-29 age group with 6% in overall positions.
  • Women in management. Within the five analyzed positions, the highest percentage of women were found in the security director/manager position at 10%.

Read the survey results, get to know how your salary rates, and gain insights of your own.

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Review: Cyber Smart

Cyber Smart

Do you believe you’re not interesting or important enough to be targeted by a cybercriminal? Do you think your personal data doesn’t hold any value? Bart R. McDonough proves why those beliefs are wrong in his book Cyber Smart: Five Habits to Protect Your Family, Money, and Identity from Cyber Criminals.

McDonough, CEO and Founder of Agio, is a cybersecurity expert, speaker and author with more than 20 years of experience in the field, and this is his debut book.

Cyber Smart: Five Habits to Protect Your Family, Money, and Identity from Cyber Criminals

He starts by debunking the most common cybersecurity myths, like the one mentioned above. Whether you like it or not, you are important, and your data is important. Also, everything has a price.

McDonough explains all the possible risks and threats you could encounter in a connected world, who are the bad actors, what their goals are and, most importantly, their attack methods.

The author presents five golden rules – or, as he calls them, “Brilliance in the Basics” habits – you should be complying with to maintain a good cybersecurity hygiene: update your devices, enable two-factor authentication, use a password manager, install and update antivirus software, and back up your data.

The second half of the book gives you detailed and specific recommendations on how to protect your:

  • Identity
  • Children
  • Money
  • Email
  • Files
  • Social media
  • Website access and passwords
  • Computer
  • Mobile devices
  • Home Wi-Fi
  • IoT devices
  • Your information when traveling.

McDonough doesn’t use scare tactics that could possibly make you want to forego all technology and go live in the woods. On the contrary, he wants you to embrace it and understand that even if the online world poses so many threats, there’s a lot you can do to protect yourself.

Who is this book for?

You don’t need to be a cybersecurity professional to understand this book. Its language is simple and it offers many comprehensible everyday examples and detailed tips. It’s a book you should definitely have in your home library, also for future reference.

The author has a very clear message: don’t just sit back and hope bad actors will pass you over. Be proactive and take all the possible and necessary steps to secure your data and your devices.

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Arlo: An open source post-election auditing tool

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is teaming up with election officials and their private sector partners to develop and pilot an open source post-election auditing tool ahead of the 2020 elections.

The tool, known as Arlo, is being created by VotingWorks, a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to building secure election technology.

About Arlo

Arlo is open source software provided free for state and local election officials and their private sector partners to use.

The tool supports numerous types of post-election audits across various types of voting systems including all major vendors.

Arlo provides an easy way to perform the calculations needed for the audit: determining how many ballots to audit, randomly selecting which ballots will be audited, comparing audited votes to tabulated votes, and knowing when the audit is complete.

The first version of Arlo is already supporting pilot post-election audits across the country, including several from this month’s elections.

Some partners of this pilot program include election officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, and Georgia. Additional partners will be announced in the coming weeks.

Improving post-election auditing

CISA’s investment is designed to support election officials and their private sector partners who are working to improve post-election auditing in the 2020 election and beyond.

“Heading into 2020, we’re exploring all possible ways that we can support state and local election officials while also ensuring that Americans across the country can confidently cast their votes,” said CISA Director Christopher Krebs.

“At a time when we know foreign actors are attempting to interfere and cast doubt on our democratic processes, it’s incredibly important elections are secure, resilient, and transparent. For years, we have promoted the value of auditability in election security, it was a natural extension to support this open source auditing tool for use by election officials and vendors, alike.”

“We’re very excited to partner with CISA to develop Arlo, a critical tool supporting the implementation of more efficient and effective post-election audits. Because Arlo is open-source, anyone can take it and use it and anyone can verify that it implements audits correctly,” said Ben Adida, Executive Director of VotingWorks.