OK, with all due respect to your post and to your intellect. I am not a genius but I will lay it out for you as best I can and as a defender of the (ISC)2 Community. I am retired but I am an adjunct professor of cybersecurity now, and yes, I know the differences between information assurance, information systems security, and now cybersecurity as well as know the rules to the forums.
I say YES despite the issues with the (ISC)2 member support applications that have been corrected but should have not had issues in the first place and also despite the increase in the AMF and the new setup where we cannot pay it all up front at once like I used to do.
If your house installment increases 100% that is an issue because the house is NOT bringing in money. My having a CISSP has made the difference between a career paying at most 100K and one paying 150K for well over a decade. I am retired now on pension and social security so I do not make close to that kind of money anymore but that was my choice AND I still promote (ISC)2 as a member and LOCAL chapter officer.
If I paid $125 dollars for twenty years then I would have paid $2,500 to get the benefit of $500,000.00 in extra salary in just ten years of my working career. That is orders of magnitude better than a college degree today in terms of ROI capitalistic thinking. HOWEVER, it is more than that because organizations like (ISC)2 have elevated the information security profession unlike any other organization has for their professions. We are truly fortunate to be in the profession we are in. In the Army it was almost mandatory for officers to be part of professional organizations that they paid dues to and in those days you would not dare complain. The CISSP credential was launched in 1994.
AMA dues for military (among the lowest) are $280 and doctors had to pay an enormous amount to get their degrees and had to also pay with decades of hard study and their lives to even become a doctor see https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-member-benefits/member-eligibility-dues/ama-membership-dues
Lawyers pay the ABA anywhere from $75 to $450, depending on years as a lawyer and type of practice area and you can see that at this link https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/08/aba_leadership_appro/
More related to our profession are 2019 IEEE membership dues that are $203 a year.
Across the board, we Cyber/Information System Security professionals are not really asked that much in terms of giving back to our profession.
If my health, house, or car Insurance increases 100% then I need to find another company or I have to just pay it unless I want to go uninsured. Health insurance has increased 196% since 1999, with worker contributions growing 182 percent. I assure you that there is NO increase in value either, in fact co-pays are much more than they have ever been.
If your car installments increases 100% then it is a breach of contract so that will not happen but I could sell the car and save up to buy one that is good enough for cash like we used to do before people could get car loans.
The inflation rate relative to 1999 is such that $100 in 1999 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $150.72 in 2018, a difference of $50.72 over 19 years, you can find that out by going to inflation calculators that are on-line. Our profession has grown an order of magnitude in terms of prestige and pay since 1999.
The average salary for our cybersecurity profession is now about $107,172 according to Zip Recruiter and this is consistent with what the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reportts at https://www.bls.gov/ and CISSPs make more than that https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/average-cissp-salary-2013/#gref
I was a DoD Certified Facility Security Officer Professional in 1993 and I made at most $35, 000 a year and my duties included security for our classified processor as well as the entire facility and that was an additional duty to being my being a systems analyst and task order lead. I was lucky to even have a job back then when the .com bubble burst.
I worked as a professional since 1979 starting as a commissioned Army Officer and you can go online and see how low Army pay was before President Reagan.
If Gas increases 100% then that would motivate people to go green and save the planet 🙂 Gas has gone up enormously since 1999. Gas costing $20 in the year 1999 would cost $45.88 in 2019 for an equivalent purchase.
The CISSP of (ISC)2 came into being in 1994 long after I started working as a professional officer and all the other certifications generally followed it. Before commercial certifications like the CISSP, you had organizational ones like DoD had and they did not have fees but they were not worth anything outside the actual service of the DoD such as FSOs under the Defense Security Service for government contractors.
Respectfully,
Francis (Frank) Mayer, CISSP EMERITUS
