CEH Salary: Check a CEH Average Salary Before You Pursue one of the Highest-Paying IT Jobs

Let’s Know About Certified Ethical Hacker or CEH, first!

Before we begin discussing the career prospect of CEH or give you a detailed insight into how much an ethical hacker makes based on locations, experience, and skill-sets, let’s first get an idea about who is an ethical hacker, what are his/her roles and responsibilities. 

Mind-Boggling Numbers about Cost of Data Breach & Data Breach

• According to Risk Based Security, the number of data exposed due to data breach has increased to 36 billion in 2024, which was 4.1 billion in 2019.
• Global average total cost of a data breach in 2024 was $3.86 million.
• With 7.13 million, Healthcare has the highest industry average cost.
• Average total cost of businesses without security automation was $6.03 million, while the average cost of a data breach for businesses that had fully deployed security automation in 2024 was $2.45 million.

Who’s an Ethical Hacker? What is Ethical Hacking?

There’s really no set definition of who is an ethical hacker. In simpler terms, an ethical hacker is someone who lawfully accesses any organization or individual's system or network to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities in a system or network that can be exploited by malicious hackers. 

This process of penetrating systems or networks to improve the security stance of an organization or business is called ethical hacking.

Being a certified ethical hacker equips you with the tools, methodology, and techniques to handle whatever cyber-attack or ethical hacking scenarios you might come across in your IT cybersecurity career.

Your main roles and responsibilities are:

• Internal / external vulnerability assessment and penetration tests and application testing and penetration testing
• Exploiting SQL injection, cross-site scripting, parameter manipulation, session hijacking
• Wireless security assessment and network device configuration review along with technical security assessments (Windows/Unix Based, Firewalls, Routers, Servers, etc)
• Develop low-level tools that improve security testing and monitoring & deliver detailed reports to different team members and executives that document security findings
• Analyze and recommend remediation strategies that will address vulnerabilities and mitigate risks
• Review and hire vendors to incorporate security systems
• Maintain current knowledge and expertise with relevant security, IT environment, and industry IT trends
• Train staff and personnel on best practices for network security

To answer how much do certified ethical hackers make: A CEH earns $90,000 on average.

Wanna pursue a training course that helps you with employment practices that are actually used by hackers for writing codes? We’re ready for you!

Let’s Know 6 Factors that May Influence Your CEH Salary

CEH is a trending job profile and as stated above it's one of the 15 highest-paying IT certifications. So, the education, the training and certifications, the hustle, and the hard work will pay off when you’ve got your job as a certified ethical hacker or upskilled your resume and got a promotion in your jobs and the salary you want. However, at times despite working hard or gaining enough experience you aren’t paid well or not what you should be getting. 

There are a lot of factors that can be the reason you land on the lower end of the pay scale. So, we’ve identified here 6 factors or reasons that may affect your CEH salary. So let’s check them out so that it will help you in understanding what employers look at when hiring new employees and what you need to do in order to achieve the promotion or high paycheck to propel your career growth:

Popular Companies for Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Certifications

• Wipro Technologies Ltd
• Amazon
• Gartner
• SAP
• IBM India Private Limited
• EY (Ernst & Young)
• Accenture Technology Solutions
• Disney
• Northrop Grumman Corporation
• Deloitte
• Barclays

Industries Where a CEH can Work

Certified Ethical Hacking experts are usually hired by industries such as:

•  IT 
• Healthcare 
• Banking
• Government agencies
• Insurance industries, and many more

How Much an Ethical Hacker Makes?

As discussed, your salary depends on a lot of factors starting from the kind of skills you possess to the location your work is at. Even your job interview skills influence your salary. However, with experience, expertise, and proper personality development as well as training and certificate you begin to perform your role with higher efficiency. Eventually getting the CEH salary you wish for and deserve rightfully. Here are four factors that will help you know how much an ethical hacker makes:

CEH Salary: Based on Experience

• An entry-level CEH average salary who has less than 1-year of experience earns near about $77,227.
• An early career CEH certification salary with 1-4 years of experience earns an average of nearly $81,672. 
• A mid-career CEH salary with 5-9 years of experience earns on an average somewhere $93,000. 
• Similarly, an experienced CEH jobs salary with  over 10-19 years of experience can demand an average salary of  close to $100,000

CEH Certification Salary: Based on Employer

Your CEH salary will also be dependent on where you are working with or who is your employer. The companies that pay quite well are Walt Disney where the salary of a CEH can be anywhere from $127,273 to over $136,405. Northrop Grumman Corporation pays $77,000 on entry-level and that can go up to over $140,000. While a big giant like Accenture from $73,386 and go up to $160,287 and more.

CEH Salary: Based on Skill-set

There is a difference in salaries in terms of skill set. Being a Certified Ethical Hacker there are quite a few job profiles that you do that have a direct impact on your CEH jobs salary. These additional skills and roles related to the CEH certification salary also make a difference in your pay scale. For instance, a Cyber Security personnel earns on average $82,968, while IT Security & Infrastructure can seek $85,000, Penetration Testing allows you to earn $72,000 on average. Meanwhile your skills in Network Security Management and Computer Security lets you demand on an average a salary of $89,300 and $80,000 respectively.

CEH Certification Salary:  Based on Location

Where you work as in the location or the area also plays a vital role in influencing your salary as a CEH. Across the globe, one can see a huge variation in the Salaries based on the location, as there are hundreds of factors that play a role in deciding the living standard, salary, or even demand of a particular skill set at a location. 

Let us talk about some of the major locations across the world which are the top favorites of most people and let you know how much an ethical hacker makes there:

CEH Job Status based on Top Job Portals

Before you decide to pursue any career, we’re always worried about the career prospect of the job, is it easily available or not. And in order to give you the right insight, let us quickly have a look at the real-time numbers in terms of available jobs as a Certified Ethical Hacker from some of the top Job Portals from the US, India, UK, Australia, Canada, etc.

Over 4,000+ jobs are available for the role of Certified Ethical Hacker in Canada

4,389 jobs are available for the Certified Ethical Hacker in India

In February 2021 only, there were 879 active vacancies for CEH in Australia

More than 3,500 vacancies have been open for CEH in India

Salaries of Jobs related to Certified Ethical Hacker

• Information Security Analyst Avg. Salary: $51k — $111k
• Software Engineer Avg. Salary $62k — $128k
• Cyber Security Analyst Avg. Salary $52k — $117k
• Security Engineer Avg. Salary $62k — $135k
• Information Technology (IT) Manager Avg. Salary: $55k — $134k
• Security Analyst Avg. Salary: $49k — $99k
• Senior Software Engineer Avg. Salary: $87k — $158k
• Information Security Manager Avg. Salary: $79k — $152k
• Information Technology (IT) Director Avg. Salary: $70k — $174k

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Conclusion

The cost of a data breach is rising. With the average total cost of a data breach reaching $3.86 million in 2020 and how much time it takes to identify a breach and then correct it (207 days to identify and 73 days to correct it,) certified ethical hackers are in demand. However, you can only enjoy this one of the highest-paying IT certifications when you’ve gone through ethical hacking certification and training, skill, and possess certain work ethics.

We hope now you’ve got a bigger picture of the career possibilities and prospects of this job profile and how it is here to stay. Especially when more and more businesses are realizing that the cost of hiring a cybersecurity professional is still cheaper than the cost incurred due to cybersecurity threats. 

But, if you’ve any doubt or want to know more about the career prospect of CEH or its certification path. Share with us, we’ll be waiting for your comments!