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CISO Compensation Resources

Typical Compensation Structures

For most CISOs, compensation comes in three major buckets: Base salary, Bonus, and Equity. Salary and Bonus together make up what is considered to be the "cash" compensation. Equity can be in the form of Options, Restricted Share Units (RSUs), and/or Performance Share Units (PSUs).

Recent CISO Salary Surveys

Pictures have clickable links

Heidrick & Struggles CISO Survey

IANS CISO Compensation Benchmarks

IANS CISO Compensation Benchmarks

Considered by Fortune 100 CISOs to be the gold standard for top end roles. Half the salary data respondents are at companies with over $10B in revenue.

2023 US medians of $620k cash and $1.1M overall

IANS CISO Compensation Benchmarks

IANS CISO Compensation Benchmarks

IANS CISO Compensation Benchmarks

More than 600 respondents in the US and Canada, 87% of which are at companies smaller than $10B in revenue.


2023 US median total comp (salary, bonus, equity) of $388k

Acumin Renumeration Report

Hitch Partners CISO Security Leadership Survey

Hitch Partners CISO Security Leadership Survey

UK-focused data across all Cyber roles, not just CISOs.


2023 UK salary range of £200- 400k

Hitch Partners CISO Security Leadership Survey

Hitch Partners CISO Security Leadership Survey

Hitch Partners CISO Security Leadership Survey

Specialist US CISO recruitment firm's survey with more than 300 respondents. 


2024 US averages of $447k cash and $739k overall for publicly trader and $393k cash and $633k overall for privately held companies

Other Compensation Resources

CISO salary information from large, public job sites such as Salary.com or Glassdoor.com should be taken with a grain of salt. The most accurate information comes from focused survey responses from sitting CISOs.


If your recruitment process is being led by an internal recruiter, your best course of action may be to cite one of the surveys above as your guideline and any numbers you would give out initially would depend upon the Cyber risk and resilience levels in the company. When working with external recruiters you can generally get a better feel for the company's desired range.

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