CISSP: One Of the Best Paid IT Certifications in 2013

ISC’s CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification often comes up in among the highest paid IT certifications. How true is this?

According to Techrepublic.com, CISSP was one of top 5 in-demand IT certifications for 2013, with salary ranging from $65,000 to $111,000. Another source states CISSP the second most paid IT certification this year, with average salary being $103,299. In case you haven’t heard much about the CISSP, let’s shed some light on it. Who knows, it may be your next step towards a rewarding career in the information security.

(ISC)² is a not-for-profit  organization that focuses on educating and certifying information security professionals throughout their careers, and its certifications are considered to be the gold standard of information security. To put it short, they’ve got the history and the experience to back their reputation of information security knowledge leaders.

CISSP is a professional level certification. To quality for it, you possess at least five years of direct full-time security work experience in two or more of the ten (ISC)² information security domains (CBK). For those holding either a four-year college degree, a Master’s degree in Information Security, or for possessing one of a number of other certifications from other organizations, one year of professional experience can be waived.

You’ll have to pass a 6-hour written exam at a Pearson Vue training center. So succeed, candidates need to reach a minimum scaled score of 700 points out of 1000 possible points. With the total of 250 multiple choice questions, the exam includes 25 experimental questions that aren’t graded.

ISC’s CISSP exam covers the following domains:

• Access control
• Telecommunications and network security
• Information security governance and risk management
• Software development security
• Cryptography
• Security architecture and design
• Operations security
• Business continuity and disaster recovery planning
• Legal, regulations, investigations and compliance
• Physical (environmental) security

Full exam outline (over 40 page PDF) is available for free from the ISC website.

Are you interested? Take a look at the ISC website, and we’ll go into more detail about this 6 hour written exam next week.

• Category: isc
• Tags: 2013, certification, cissp, exam, exams, isc, isc2, it certification, it certification exam, it certification exams, it certifications, salary