Throughline

Technology

Information Security Analyst in the United States

400 postings read · sampled 2026-10-01 · source ats · 111 employers · largest 9% of it

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 400 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own
$749CISSP · ~300 hrs
asked for in 40 of 400 postings — 10%
If you earned all 2 of them
$2,498
fees checked 2026-08
700 hrs
700 hours — over a year at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Bachelor's Degree — cost varies by institution; Secret Security Clearance — sponsored by an employer, not purchasable.

Lower signal for this role

Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Education reported by people doing this job
53%reported bachelor’s degree
  • Bachelor’s degree53%
  • Post-baccalaureate certificate23%
  • Associate’s degree or other 2-year degree13%

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 15-1212.00 · pulled 2026-10-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$75,090
10th percentile
$129,180
median
$199,850
90th percentile

Every credential above costs $2,498 — about 5 days' pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

SpaceX · Anduril Industries · Anthropic · Cloudflare · OpenAI · Stripe · Databricks · GitLab · Roblox · Elastic · Robinhood · Applied Intuition · Datadog · Harvey · Klaviyo · Ramp · Samsara · Vercel · vTech Solution · Ask IT Consulting · Decagon · HelloFresh · Scale AI · USM · Verkada · 360 IT Professionals · Deegit Inc · Faire · MongoDB · Notion · Oscar Health · Wiz · Zoox · Abridge · Bosch · Braze · Brex · Coinbase · Collabera · Etched · Flexport · Lyft · Reddit · Ridgeline · Rocket Lab · Sonsoft Inc · Twilio · Affirm · Artech Information System · Asana · Astranis · Betterment · Blink Health · Cursor · Discord · Fanatics Commerce · Headway · Idealforce LLC · Intuitive Surgical · Mercor · Perplexity · Sierra · Skydio · SoFi · Suno · System Canada Technologies · WorkOS · Yotpo · Zocdoc · 1X · Alloy · Apptronik · Attentive · Baseten · Chime · City of New York · Clover Health · Cognition · Collective Health · ElevenLabs · Ethos Life · FanDuel · Farther · Figma · Harbinger Motors · Hinge Health · incident.io · Included Health · Infojini Inc · Instacart · Insurify · Kin Insurance · Latitude Inc · Lucid Motors · Mark43 · Mercury · Modal · Modern Health · Monzo · Morgan & Morgan · Nimble Robotics · OpenEvidence · Range · Resend · Spring Health · Stem Xpert · Success Academy Charter Schools · Supabase · Toast · Walmart · Wynn Resorts

Next

  • Roast and Resolve — Now aim your résumé at this target. Free roast, paid rewrite.
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