Starting a cybersecurity career with a degree versus certifications

Introduction

Do you need a degree to get a job in cybersecurity? To say this is a hotly debated issue would be an understatement. A quick Google search shows 822,000,000 results for that question. And after witnessing the meteoric success of college dropouts like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, there’s no wonder it’s such a contentious topic.  

It’s a debate that’s raging among tech’s hiring managers and executives, too. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty announced in 2017 that she wants to hire more workers who don’t have four-year degrees but do have the right skills for the job. A shift towards skills-based hiring may be the key to filling the massive (and growing) amount of unfilled tech jobs in the U.S. 

• 26% of cybersecurity workers in the U.S. do not have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
• 69% of CompTIA certification candidates don’t have a four-year college degree (CompTIA Post Exam Survey).
• For each cybersecurity job opening, there are only 2.3 cybersecurity workers available for employers to recruit

What does all that mean for you and your career? Can you get a cybersecurity job with certifications and no degree? Let’s take a look! 

Entry-level versus advanced jobs 

So, what are entry-level job openings in cybersecurity asking for? To answer that question, we’ll take a look at data published by CyberSeek and Burning Glass. According to the latter, roughly eight out of every ten cybersecurity job postings asks for a bachelor’s degree or higher. In other words, while it’s possible to work your way into cybersecurity without a degree, it may be challenging to do so successfully. 

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That doesn’t mean that certifications aren’t a hot commodity, though. More than one-third of cybersecurity job postings (Read more...)