(ISC)² CISSP

Average CISSP salary

The Certified Information Systems Security Professional, or CISSP, is a cybersecurity management certification. It is intended for experienced information security professionals and verifies that the cert holder knows cybersecurity program design, implementation and management. The knowledge it certifies puts you on the footing of cybersecurity and IT management and may help open doors to those higher-level job roles.

CISSP is known for helping certification holders bring home a respectable average salary. With that said, you may be wondering what this average salary is. This article will detail the CISSP average salary for 2023. It will explore the requirements to earn the CISSP, what the average CISSP salary is, how much you can expect to earn in different areas of the United States as well as what the job roles that hire CISSP certification holders pay as an average salary.

CISSP requirements

To earn the CISSP certification, you must satisfy the requirements established by the certification’s hosting organization, ISC2. First, you will need to pass the CISSP certification exam. This exam covers eight domains of knowledge. The second requirement is to have at least five years of cumulative, paid work experience in two or more of the eight domains of knowledge of the CISSP common body of knowledge. If you don’t have this level of experience yet and still want to earn this certification, it is still possible. You can earn the CISSP associate certification, which buys you some time (6 years) to earn the requisite years of experience.

Please note that the CISSP certification exam was most recently updated in 2021. If you plan on using study materials that pre-date May of 2021, you must update your study materials to stay on top of the most up-to-date exam material.

CISSP average salary for 2023

You are reading this because you want to know how much you can expect to earn as an average salary if you hold the CISSP cert. As much as we can get this information from one source, it will take an analysis of some different sources and a little mathematics to get to the most accurate average CISSP salary. Below we will look at the most up-to-date numbers available.

PayScale

According to PayScale, CISSP certification holders are taking home an average annual salary of $124,000 in 2023. 

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecuriter reports that in 2023, CISSP cert holders can expect to earn an average salary of $130,585 annually.

SimpliLearn

According to SimpliLearn, you will make an average annual salary of $125,470 if you have your CISSP certification.

While we don’t have just one answer here, we can use this information to calculate an even more accurate average salary. If you average the salaries above, you will get $126,685. As some have speculated, this is a respectable salary and even more so for a professional with just 5 years of work experience. 

CISSP average salary based on location

The average salary number provided above is an average across the entire United States. For information security salaries, one strong influence on your earnings is where you live in the country. As you would suspect, the average salary for a CISSP certification holder will be higher in a large metropolitan area or an area associated with the tech sector, such as New York or Silicon Valley. The numbers prove this assumption. Below are the average salaries you can expect to earn as a CISSP certification holder:

As you can see, there are many areas of the United States where you can earn a significant amount more than the national average salary as a CISSP cert holder. Also, the spread of the above salaries is more than minimal, over $18,000 just in the locations above. With that said, remember that in many locales, you will learn less than the national average we calculated earlier.

CISSP average salary based upon job role

Another influencing factor on how much you can expect to make as a CISSP cert holder is your job role. In some ways, it can affect what you earn as much as the location where you live. Below are examples of average salaries of CISSP cert holders based on job role:

Job Role Average Salary

Information Security Manager $128,083

Cyber Security Engineer $118,862

Cyber Security Analyst $98,987

Information Security Analyst $93,503

Chief Information Security Officer $180,216

Security Engineer $110,566

Security Architect, IT $142,095

Deciding on CISSP

CISSP is an information security certification intended for management-focused professionals with at least five years of relevant work experience. The average salary for a CISSP certification holder in 2023 is over $126,000 per year. This average salary is influenced by factors such as where you live and what job role you are working; however, any way you slice it, earning the CISSP will give your average salary a healthy boost.

Thinking of earning the CISSP for yourself? Try Infosec’s CISSP boot camp and reach your goal easier and faster!

Check out Infosec's CISSP hub to learn more.