Defying expectations amid a global recession, the results of the (ISC)² 2010 Career Impact Survey released today found that more than half of information security professionals surveyed received salary increases in 2009, while less than five percent of participants lost their jobs. (ISC)², the largest not-for-profit membership body of certified information security professionals worldwide, announced the results of its second survey tracking the impact of the economic climate on salaries, hiring outlook, budgets, threats and more.
The hiring managers surveyed in the U.S. said that they were looking for candidates with specific skills in these top five categories: operations security; access control systems and methodology; information risk management; applications and system development security; and security architecture and models.
More than half of the professionals surveyed in the U.S. received salary increases in 2009.
Of the 800-plus respondents who identified themselves as having hiring responsibilities, more than half, 50.1 percent in the U.S., said they were looking to hire permanent and/or contract employees in 2010. In the U.S., this is an improvement over the previous year’s survey, when 44.5 percent of hiring managers said they expected to be hiring in the second half of 2009.
Of those hiring, 41.5 percent in U.S. said they will be hiring three or more information security professionals this year, compared to the 2009 survey, in which just 13.1 percent said they would be hiring three or more new permanent or contract employees. Over 90 percent of hiring managers globally and in the U.S. said their biggest hiring challenges were finding candidates with the right skills and level of experience.
