Which Cybersecurity Careers Are Growing Fastest, and How to Get In

Cybersecurity is growing, but the growth is not spread evenly across IT, and the choice of specialty matters more than the choice to enter the field. A Wondercraft analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, reported by KOTA (https://www.kotatv.com/2026/10/26/healthcare-cybersecurity-jobs-lead-nations-fastest-growing-careers-study-finds/), found information security analyst employment rose 77% from 2020 to 2024. Network and computer systems administrator employment fell 35% over the same period.

That split changes what a degree or certification should aim at. Each role is examined the same way: what is growing, what it pays, which credentials it asks for, and how to get in.

Employers are paying for defenders, not general upkeep of networks.

The Short Answer: Which Cybersecurity Careers Are Growing Fastest

What is the fastest growing cybersecurity career right now? Information security analyst is the clearest answer backed by federal data: a Wondercraft analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures found employment in the role rose 77% from 2020 to 2024, ranking second among 230 occupations that employ at least 100,000 workers. Inside security teams, AI security, cloud security and incident response are the specialties gaining the most momentum, although they are usually counted under broader job titles rather than tracked on their own.

Are Cybersecurity Jobs in High Demand?

Yes, but not uniformly. Over the same period, network and computer systems administrators fell 35%, the steepest drop in the analysis. That contrast matters if you are choosing a program. Demand is following security-specific work: spotting threats, investigating incidents, and protecting cloud and AI systems. General IT administration, the traditional on-ramp into tech, is shrinking. A credential that maps to defender and analyst work puts you where hiring is rising, while a legacy network admin track points you toward a contracting field.

Top Roles at a Glance

• Information security analyst: The core defender role and the one with the strongest federal employment data behind it.
• Incident responder: Investigates and contains breaches, often inside a security operations center.
• Cloud security engineer: Secures workloads as organizations move infrastructure off premises.
• AI security engineer: Protects machine learning models and the data pipelines that feed them.
• Security operations (SOC) analyst: Monitors alerts around the clock and is a common first job in the field.

Why the Numbers Will Not Always Match

Growth figures depend on what a source measures. Employment change counts people actually working in a role, BLS projections forecast future openings, and job posting data tracks what employers advertise. Each tells a different part of the story, so expect the figures to disagree. A later section explains how to read them together.

Security Analysts up 77%, Network Admins Down 35%: What the Split Tells Us

A new analysis from AI podcast company Wondercraft, reported by KOTA on Oct. 26, 2026, gives a useful snapshot of where jobs actually moved.¹ It examined Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 230 occupations that employ at least 100,000 workers and compared 2020 with 2024. Information security analysts ranked second overall, with employment up 77%. Network and computer systems administrators posted the steepest decline of any occupation, down 35%.

Two tech jobs, opposite directions

Both occupations sit under the broad IT umbrella, yet they moved apart sharply. That points to growth concentrated in security-specific roles rather than general IT administration. Our read, and it is an interpretation rather than something the study proves, is that routine infrastructure work is increasingly automated, handled by cloud platforms, or folded into other jobs. Defending systems against live threats is harder to hand off to a dashboard.

What this means for your program choice

If you are comparing online degrees or certifications, look for coursework that maps to analyst and defender work:

• Threat detection: monitoring, log analysis and alert triage.
• Incident response: containment, investigation and recovery.
• Security operations: day-to-day work in a security operations center.

Be cautious about programs built mostly around legacy network administration, such as manual configuration and on-premises server upkeep. Those skills still matter as background, but they are not where the 2020 to 2024 growth landed.

Read the number with its caveats

This is a measure of past employment change, not a forecast. It should not be read as a promise of what the next four years will bring. A few other limits apply:

• The counts appear to come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, which covers roughly 830 occupations and is built from six semiannual panels collected over three years.²
• That survey counts wage and salary workers at nonfarm establishments. Self-employed workers and business owners are left out.
• Wondercraft's exact calculations and filters are not public in the sources we reviewed, so we cannot reproduce the 77% figure ourselves.
• Coverage describes 2020 through 2024, which is a four-year span even though it touches five calendar years.

Treat the figure as strong directional evidence, then check it against BLS projections and current job postings before you commit to a program.

How Much Did Information Security Analyst Jobs Grow From 2020 to 2026?

A Wondercraft analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data covered 230 U.S. occupations that each employ at least 100,000 workers. Psychiatric technicians led with 106% employment growth, information security analysts placed second at 77%, and coaches and scouts were third at 62%. Security analysts were the only tech occupation near the top of the list, while network and computer systems administrators had the steepest decline of any occupation studied, falling 35% over the same period.

Why Growth Numbers Disagree: Employment, Projections, Job Postings and Skills Demand

Cybersecurity demand is now measured in at least four different ways, and the headline you read depends on which one the writer picked. Each lens answers a different question.

Four Lenses, Four Questions

• Realized employment change: What already happened. A Wondercraft analysis of BLS data found information security analyst employment rose 77% from 2020 to 2024.
• BLS 10-year projections: Where the government expects the occupation to be a decade from now, based on modeled economic conditions.
• Live job postings: How many employers are advertising right now. Postings reflect this quarter's budgets and hiring mood, not long-term need.
• Workforce-gap and skills-demand estimates: Industry surveys of unfilled need or hard-to-find skills. They help you spot scarce skills, but methods vary widely between publishers.

Reconciling the 21% to 35% Range

Most of the confusion comes from mixing BLS projection cycles.

• 2025-35 (current Occupational Outlook Handbook): 21% growth, from 192,900 jobs in 2025 to 233,400 in 2035. That is an increase of 40,600, with about 14,100 openings per year on average.¹
• 2024-34 (prior cycle): BLS materials show 32% with about 17,300 openings a year.² A separate Employment Projections release for the same period reports 28.5%, from 182,800 jobs in 2024 to 234,900 in 2034, an increase of 52,100.³ BLS did not present this cycle consistently, so treat these as one older estimate, not two competing forecasts.
• 35%: This figure belongs to data scientists, projected to grow 35% from 2025 to 2035.⁴ When you see it attached to security analysts, it is most likely an occupation mix-up.

Here is the detail most articles miss: the projected endpoint barely moved between cycles (about 234,900 versus 233,400). The percentage fell mainly because the starting headcount was already higher in 2025. Some of the forecast growth has simply happened.

Why Postings Can Fall While Employment Rises

Total posting counts can soften in 2026 even as employment and projections climb. Hiring freezes and budget caps cut new listings first. Many teams backfill departures instead of adding seats. Employers also lean toward experienced and specialized hires, which shrinks the pool of entry-level ads newcomers see.

A Simple Rule for Reading the Numbers

• Planning a degree or career change: Use BLS projections.
• Gauging how hard the job search will be this year: Watch postings.
• Judging whether demand is real: Look at realized employment change.

Methodology note: we quote each BLS figure with its projection period and do not blend cycles. Annual openings include replacements for workers who leave the occupation, which is why they exceed yearly net growth.

Fastest-Growing Cybersecurity Roles Compared

Total US cybersecurity job postings fell to 235,786 from January through September 2026, down 26.4% from 320,210 in the same months of 2025, according to CyberSN. Specialized roles moved the other way: AI security engineer postings rose 268.3% and cyber data scientist postings rose 203.5% year over year. The roles below show how demand, duties and experience requirements differ, from Tier 1 SOC seats that accept newcomers to AI security jobs that expect years of programming.

Where the Hiring Is: Healthcare, Finance and Government

The Wondercraft analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data put healthcare roles all over its fastest-growing list, and information security analysts ranked second at 77% growth from 2020 to 2024. Those two trends meet in hospitals and health systems, which hold sensitive patient data and have become frequent ransomware targets. Healthcare is not the only sector pulling in security talent, though.

Healthcare

HIPAA enforcement, connected medical devices and breach costs drive hiring here. IBM's 2025 findings ranked healthcare as the costliest sector for a breach. Expect openings in compliance, incident response and security analysis. Healthcare made up about 5% of respondents in ISC2's 2025 workforce study, so it is a smaller employer than the other two.

Finance

PCI DSS, SOX and other compliance obligations keep financial firms hiring, and one 2026 analysis describes the sector as hiring the most per capita. Finance made up 11% of ISC2 respondents. Fraud analysis, governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and application security are the specialties employers tend to seek.

Government

The federal government and its contractors are described as the largest single employer of U.S. security staff, and government accounted for 11% of ISC2 respondents, with the military adding 5%. Clearance-eligible roles are common, which favors candidates who can pass a background investigation.

Check Before You Commit

Those ISC2 shares describe who works where, not where openings are concentrated. Sector demand also moves with budgets and regulation, and 2026 posting counts vary by source: one tracker shows postings from January to September down 26.4% from a year earlier, while another reported openings up 12% year over year in March. Search your own metro area on job boards before choosing a specialty.

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Salary Ranges for Security Analysts, Systems Administrators and IT Managers

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025) shows how pay lines up across the three roles most career changers weigh against each other. Information security analysts earn a national median of $129,180, about $30,000 more than network and computer systems administrators at $99,130. Computer and information systems managers, the leadership tier many analysts eventually move into, report a median of $175,140.

The Pay Gap Between Security and Legacy IT Roles

Security specialists out-earn general IT administrators by a wide margin.

Degree or Certification: What High-Growth Roles Actually Require

Do you need a cybersecurity degree, or are certifications enough? It depends on the role you are aiming for, and national posting data shows both matter: roughly 54% of cybersecurity listings require a bachelor's degree, and about 57% mention at least one certification. Those groups overlap heavily. One 2026 summary puts certification preference even higher, above 75%, so treat the exact share as a range, not a fixed number.

Match the Credential to the Role

• Entry-level and SOC analyst: CompTIA Security+ is the most requested starting credential, and it is the baseline for many federal roles. SOC paths often add CySA+ or GIAC's GCIH.
• Mid-level analyst: Security+, CEH and increasingly cloud security credentials.
• Senior and management: CISSP is the most requested senior credential. CISM is common in management, and CISA, CISM and CRISC show up in GRC and audit work.
• Cloud security: AWS Security Specialty, Azure Security Engineer and CCSP.
• Offensive security: OSCP and CEH.
• AI security: No dominant certification exists yet. Employers tend to pair CISSP with risk and governance knowledge, so build that foundation plus data science skills.

What Postings Say About Degrees

Entry-level listings often read "Security+ or equivalent experience," which leaves room for people without a degree. Engineering roles lean harder on schooling: in one analysis of security engineer postings, 64% required a bachelor's, 22% preferred or required a graduate degree, and 14% accepted sub-bachelor credentials. That analysis doesn't make clear how the first two groups overlap, so read the figures as a general tilt toward degrees.

A Simple Rule of Thumb

Certifications prove a specific skill quickly. A degree eases entry into analyst, data science, and management tracks and helps most when you are changing careers with no IT background.

Quick Decision Guide

• Already working in IT: Start with Security+, then CySA+ or a cloud credential.
• No IT experience: A degree plus Security+ gives you both structure and a recognized signal.
• Aiming for management or data-heavy roles: Plan on a degree, then CISSP or CISM once you have the experience.

If you need to keep working, an online cybersecurity degree is the practical route. Keep in mind that degree fields map to many occupations, and each occupation draws from many fields, so a program choice never guarantees a particular job. Choose the program, then back it with the certification your target role actually lists.

Entry Paths Into In-Demand Specialties

There is no single doorway into cybersecurity, which is good news if you're changing careers. Most people arrive through one of a few realistic routes, then climb toward a specialty once they have hands-on reps under their belt.

Four Realistic Routes In

• IT support to SOC: Help desk, sysadmin or networking roles build the baseline (Windows and Linux, logs, identity) that feeds directly into a Tier 1 Security Operations Center seat.
• Internships and apprenticeships: These can stand in for some formal experience, though there's no fixed duration or equivalency rule. Build a portfolio of lab work, not just certificates.
• Military and government programs: Structured training pipelines that move people into defender roles with clear progression.
• Adjacent career changes: Networking, data and software backgrounds transfer well, especially into cloud or application security later on.

The Typical Climb

Most analysts start at SOC Tier 1, which generally sits in the 0 to 2 year range alongside other security support roles. Tier 2 commonly follows around 2 to 4 years, and Tier 3, incident response or detection engineering tends to land near 4 to 6+ years, though employers vary and no universal threshold exists.

Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are a frequent first-rung employer. Junior analysts there triage and correlate SIEM alerts, document findings and escalate, which packs a lot of varied experience into a short window. It isn't required or a guaranteed fast track, but it's a proven place to log hands-on hours.

Beginner-Accessible vs. Later Specialties

SOC analyst and security support are the most beginner-friendly entry points. Cloud security and AI security usually come later, after you've built SOC or infrastructure experience plus hands-on cloud work. A common 2026 cloud path runs from AWS Cloud Practitioner into AWS Security Specialty or Azure Security Engineer, then CCSP. Application security rewards a development or testing background and is typically pursued after initial cyber experience.

On credentials, Security+ and ISC2's CC are common on-ramps; CySA+ fits applied SecOps once you have a year or two in. See our online cybersecurity degree and certification guides to map your next step to where demand is actually rising.

How to Future-Proof Your Cybersecurity Career Against Automation and AI

In ISC2's 2025 Workforce Study of 16,029 professionals, 41% named AI as a critical skill need, ahead of cloud security at 36%.¹ That tells you where employers feel the gap, and it points to the right way to think about automation: as something that changes tasks, not whole jobs.

Separate Tasks From Jobs

Alert triage and routine monitoring are the work automation absorbs first. Investigation, risk decisions and explaining findings to non-technical leaders stay human. ISC2 describes the shift as moving work toward supervision, decision-making and risk assessment. Its 2026 pulse survey of AI-using practitioners (856 respondents) backs this up: 65% spend more time deciding when to trust AI output, and 63% spend more time validating it.² Over 70% of professionals expect AI to create demand for more strategic, specialized roles.²

Entry level is the one soft spot. In that same pulse survey, 56% said AI reduced the need for entry-level roles, yet 53% saw new entry-level opportunities emerging. Treat that as a reason to build specialty skills early, not a reason to avoid the field.

Three Skill Investments Worth Making

• Cloud security: Most workloads now live in cloud environments, and 36% of professionals flagged it as a critical need.
• AI and machine learning security: Securing models and validating AI-generated output is a fast-growing skill set. Only 28% of organizations have integrated AI security tools so far, so the field is still forming.¹
• Incident response leadership: Coordinating a breach response is judgment and communication under pressure, which is exactly what software does poorly. Hiring managers in ISC2's research ranked problem solving, collaboration and communication above any single technical skill.

Layoffs and Shortages Coexist

Yes, 24% of organizations reported layoffs and 36% reported budget cuts.¹ Yet 95% reported at least one skills need, and 59% called it critical or significant. The U.K. shows the same pattern: 22% reported layoffs and 43% hiring freezes, while 58% reported a critical shortage.³ Budgets are tight, so employers fill fewer generalist seats and compete hard for specialized, certified, experienced candidates. ISC2 does not show net cybersecurity job losses overall.

Your 90-Day Next Step

Pick one analyst-track role, such as SOC analyst, incident responder or cloud security analyst. Then pick one credential that matches it and commit to finishing the study plan within 90 days. Pair it with a home lab or a project you can show an interviewer. One focused move beats five half-started ones.