During the pandemic, many workers have considered a job change, often to keep working from home: As many businesses mandate a return to the office, their employees would rather change jobs than go back to their cubes. If you're among these adventurers, and you're even a little tech-savvy, you not only have options—you can also turn a job change into a significant salary boost by focusing on cybersecurity.
There are a series of high-paying IT skills you could chase, but none have more potential than security. Based on an October 2020 study from Burning Glass Technologies, depending on the security skill you decide to chase, you'll see five-year projected growth up to 165% and a significant potential annual salary bump, on average between $5,000 and $15,000, depending on the discipline.
The area with the most potential is application-development security, and it's probably the one that'll get you the most thanks from customers and users, since you'll be making their apps and cloud services safer. This skill is best if you're currently a developer, since you'll be focusing on making code as bulletproof as possible.
Cloud security is the next area with the most potential growth and is likely the best fit for generalist IT pros looking to move into DevOps and software-defined networking (SDN). But it's also a good direction for technology architects and consultants. Since all the popular public clouds have their own DevOps tools, Burning Glass broke down which clouds will likely see the most growth in this skill category. Microsoft Azure topped the list with 164% growth, closely followed by Google Cloud, which should see up to 135% growth.
If you're not an IT professional, you can still profit from the cybersecurity boom. Disciplines including risk assessment, regulatory compliance analysis, and vertical security measures, like those for healthcare, actually hire non-technical personnel. These jobs can go to any tech-savvy professional but especially attorneys, audit specialists, and project managers.