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Only 29% of cyber professionals said they'd received additional compensation for their efforts, which is in stark contrast to other roles, where at least half of tech professionals received a pay increase in 2025, specifically in DevOps (56%), product management (51%), and business analysis (50%).

"The research clearly tells us that there's a big mismatch between the demand and the reward in cyber," said Ankur Anand, group CIO at technology and talent solutions provider Nash Squared, which owns tech recruiter Harvey Nash, the firm that produced the survey.

"I think this mismatch is due to the complacency of many boards saying nothing bad has happened in the last few years, so security must be fine. And that's the irony -- that when security teams are doing so much, and they're preventing damage to the organization, they're getting the least recognition."