In the USA very robust job growth is forecast for information systems security professionals for 2012 to 2022 with growth three times the average for all jobs and salaries over double earning the USA assessment of much better than average job growth.. Check the tab for how to become an information security analyst. Recent reports show a sellers market for prople with information security skills.
In Alberta, career prospects for security professionals shows above average demand during the next 3 years. Reports and projections can be found on the Alberta Learning Information Systems database at: http://www.alis.gov.ab.ca. Many other provinces and countries show this strong demand. CSIS in the U.S. sees the shortage as a crisis. For example on the day of this search there were 4,779 jobs for the US government which list information security (on Feb 2, 2011). And this is just the US government. On the same day in Canada, workopolis.ca listed over 2,000 jobs using the same search. Or to put is in real perspective a recent US government study found that no information security professional polled said they were looking for employment, meaning a zero percent unemployment rate and that jobs surged 16% in one quarter alone.
Graduates work in many technical, policy and management areas. Technical areas often involve server installation, testing, network design and penetration testing of servers and networks and network and security administration. Policy involves many areas such as implementing security policies, privacy policies and performing risk assessments. Management involves working at all levels to gain acceptance for security policies and procedures and the overall information security strategy. At times this can involve implementing policies and practices based on ISO standards, ISACA standards and many other industry standards for security. Recently, the legal requirement for information technology security risk audits has created an ongoing and unfulfilled demand that alone will last for a predicted 8-10 more years (this is a worldwide by-product of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation passed in the United States).
Students from the MISSM program have found jobs in all of these areas and 20% are already in management positions with another 11% doing billable consulting services. The vast majority of the others are in systems analyst classifications (non-management level).