Career Management

Cybersecurity salaries in 2025: Shifting priorities, rising demand for specialized roles

The cybersecurity job market continues to evolve in 2025, shaped by macroeconomic forces, technological disruption, and a growing reliance on artificial intelligence.

According to CyberSN’s newly released Cybersecurity Salary Data Report 2025:

  • Salary trends across 45 distinct roles show a growing divide between highly specialized positions and more generalist functions.
  • Employers prioritizing strategic depth, role clarity, and technical expertise over broader support roles.

    • Specialists and leaders see pay increases

    Roles in cloud security, identity and access management, threat hunting, DevSecOps, and product security engineering continue to command top-tier compensation. For example:

    • Experienced product security engineers can earn up to $250,000 annually, while red teamers and threat hunters are now regularly crossing the $200,000 threshold.
    • These increases reflect the critical nature of these roles in defending modern enterprises from increasingly sophisticated threats.
    • Leadership positions, too, remain highly lucrative. CISOs and CSOs now see top salaries reaching $750,000, with directors and managers also seeing solid compensation gains.
    • The report notes that these roles require a mix of technical fluency and business acumen—a combination that remains rare and in high demand.

      • GRC and compliance roles hold steady

      Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) roles continue to attract employer investment. Positions such as cybersecurity/privacy attorneys, GRC analysts, and data privacy officers show stable or growing salary ranges, underlining the importance of regulatory compliance and risk management in today’s threat landscape. With top GRC professionals earning up to $240,000, these roles are gaining recognition as strategic assets within organizations.

      Generalist and support roles plateau

      In contrast, more generalized cybersecurity roles—such as administrators and specialists—have seen salary bands level off compared to 2024. The report attributes this to a mix of automation, outsourcing (both nearshore and farshore), and tighter corporate budgets. For instance, cybersecurity administrators now top out around $130,000, with minimal year-over-year growth.

      The trend mirrors findings in CyberSN’s previous market report, which we covered in SCWorld: Cybersecurity job market faces disruptions: hiring declines in key roles amid automation and outsourcing.

      Skills-based hiring gains ground

      CyberSN’s 2025 report also emphasizes a shift toward skills-based hiring, noting that experience alone no longer guarantees higher pay. Thanks to the growing adoption of the Equal Pay Act and standardized role definitions, professionals performing similar functions are increasingly compensated equally—regardless of tenure. This levels the playing field while also making specialization and ongoing training more essential than ever for career growth.

      Strategic insights for employers and professionals

      For employers, the message is clear:

      • Competitive compensation strategies must go beyond averages to reflect the true value of specialized skills and well-defined roles.
      • For professionals, staying competitive means investing in niche expertise and adapting to a rapidly changing industry.

        • To explore the full data set and deeper insights, download the complete Cybersecurity Salary Data Report 2025.

        Bill Brenner

        InfoSec content strategist, researcher, director, tech writer, blogger and community builder. Senior Vice President of Audience Content Strategy at CyberRisk Alliance.

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