What Makes Salaries Rise for Security Professionals?
Alan Paller
Systems administrators and security administrators work hard all day, protect
critical assets, keep systems operating, clean up after the messes that users
make, and generally keep the organization operating smoothly. Yet, at the end
of the day, they rarely know whether all that work is going to be rewarded and
whether they are being treated fairly for the effort they are putting in.
Now a new survey, sponsored jointly by Sys Admin magazine, Certification
Magazine, and the SANS Institute offers a few answers. The answers may not
work for every reader, but they just might provide a clue about what matters
most in getting raises.
The data used for this article reflects answers from 1,597 Technical Security
Professionals with titles like Systems Administrator, Network Administrator,
Programmer, Security Engineer, Systems Engineer, Security Analyst/Consultant
(hands-on), Security Auditor (hands-on), Systems Integrator, Security Penetration
Tester, and Web Security Manager. Each of these people provided detailed answers
to a 30-question survey between October 20 and November 10, 2005. Their answers
constitute one of the clearest pictures ever of the developed of the technical
security professional's job.
Let's get to know the people who completed the survey.
- 11% are women, and 89% are men.
- Nearly a quarter (22%) are government contractors, reflecting the huge
market for security professionals in government.
- They are a well-educated group -- 54% have undergraduate degrees, and 18%
have Masters or Ph.D. degrees.
- Most are individual performers, but 15% manage one to three subordinates,
and 7% manage four or more subordinates.
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