Leading security certifications held by cybersecurity professionals worldwide 2021

(ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) was the most popular security certification held by cybersecurity professionals worldwide, as 38 percent of respondents reported having this certification in 2021. According to IT and security decision-makers, cyber security certifications are proof of increased knowledge and awareness of the industry while also leading to faster career growth and higher salaries for those owning such certifications. In 2022, over 50 percent of respondents considered certifications in cloud security and software security to be the most beneficial to a company’s IT security concerns.

Cyber security skills

In 2022, over 50 percent of respondents who hold the ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification stated that security skills in cloud computing were the most required by companies worldwide. Hence, it comes as no surprise that Cloud Security Specialist jobs were the most sought out jobs by cyber security companies. Moreover, 57 percent of IT decision-makers found cloud security jobs – such as cloud and data center, or application security – to be the most difficult cyber security jobs to fill in 2022.

Digital skills in the United States

In 2021, CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Security+ were the most common IT certifications held by employees in the IT sector in the United States. Nevertheless, the highest paid certifications in the country were provided by Google. Individuals who held either the Google Certified Professional Data Engineer or the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect certificate, earned on average 170 thousand U.S. dollars in 2021. When it comes to programming skills, IT professionals who know Solr – an open source, Java-based information retrieval library – earned approximately 143.5 thousand U.S. dollars.