Salary guide for cyber security professionals

CISO Platform, an online community for senior IT Security Professionals announces the official launch of its comprehensive salary report for security professionals across India. The detailed report was launched during CISO Platform Decision Summit held in New Delhi today.

According to the report, the average salary of security professionals in India is Rs. 7.8 lakhs per annum. The global average according to the study ‘Job Market Intelligence report’ by Burning Glass is $93,028. CISO Platform conducted this study with the data of 2400 IT security professionals in India between January and April, 2015.

Priyanka Aash, Managing Director of CISO Platform said -“Even though security is one of the greatest concerns, there is a lack formal statistical study of security as a profession in India. At CISO Platform, our vision is to help security professionals excel in their role through knowledge and collaboration. Hence we decided to embark on conducting the first such formal study for Indian security professionals.”

Over the last couple of years, security industry in India has seen good growth along with rising concerns of hacking threats as well as cross border cyber espionage.  During the year 2014, a total number of 32,323 websites were hacked as per CERT India. India ranked second among nations that were most targeted for cybercrimes through the social media in 2014, after the USA. In the three years up to 2013, registered cases of cyber-crime were up 350%, from 966 to 4,356, according to statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

India’s cyber security Industry is young and growing rapidly. India will require five lakh cyber security professionals by 2015 to support its fast growing internet economy as per an estimate by the Union ministry of information technology. There is a big gap between the demand and supply and this is a great opportunity for individuals who are interested to adopt IT security as career.

Key Insights from the study

Experience wise salary of Security professionals

• Salary of security professionals ranges from 1.25 lakhs per annum to 80 Lakhs per annum with an average of 7.8 lakhs per annum.

• Salary of Ethical hackers ranges from 2 lakhs per annum to 15 lakhs per annum with an average of 5.7 lakhs per annum.

• Salary of CISOs ranges from 12 lakhs per annum to 80 lakhs per annum with an average of 23.7 lakhs per annum.

• Bangalore has highest number (20.46%) of security professionals followed by NCR (20.27%).

• Telecom/ISP is the highest paying vertical with an average salary of 11.75 lakhs per annum followed by Banking/financial services with an average salary of 10.52 lakhs per annum.

• NCR has the highest average salary (8.6 lakhs per annum) for security professionals followed by Bangalore (8.44 lakhs per annum).

• The average work experience for security professionals is 6.8 years.

• Chennai has security professionals with highest average work experience (8 years followed by Mumbai (7.3 years)

 Location wise analysis

• Bangalore tops in the list in terms of most number of security professionals with 20.46% of total security professionals. While NCR comes at 2nd place with 20.27% of security professionals and Mumbai comes at 3rd place with 16.26% of security professionals.

Industry wise analysis

• Industry vertical wise, IT-software industry has attracted most number (49.13%) of security professionals. And highest number (42.56%) of professionals has a profile of consultant/analysts.

• Industry vertical wise, Telecom/ISP is the highest paying vertical with an average salary of 11.75 lakhs per annum. Banking/financial services and IT-Software comes at 2nd and 3rd place with an average salary of 10.52 lakhs per annum and 10.28 lakhs per annum respectively.