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// NIST NICE FRAMEWORK COMPONENTS v2.2.0  ·  METHODOLOGY & CROSSWALK

Methodology & NICE Crosswalk

This page explains how salary and outlook figures are presented and how the student-friendly career titles on GetIntoCyberJobs.com relate to NIST NICE Framework Components v2.2.0.

One official baseline, clearly labelled

Where a career page uses a federal salary baseline, it uses the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation Information Security Analysts: median annual wage $124,910 in May 2024. BLS projects 29% employment growth from 2024 to 2034 and about 16,000 openings per year, on average, over that decade.

Important: those figures describe the BLS Information Security Analysts occupation. They are not claimed to be a role-specific BLS median for every job title on this site. Cybersecurity job titles vary between employers, and some roles do not have a one-to-one BLS occupation match.

Pages that display SEE BLS intentionally avoid asserting a role-specific federal salary figure. Experience-level salary ranges shown inside career explainers are illustrative market ranges rather than BLS medians; actual pay varies by employer, location, sector, experience, clearance requirements, and responsibilities.

Career-title crosswalk

NIST released NICE Framework Components v2.2.0 on 28 April 2026. NICE Work Roles describe groupings of work; they are not necessarily job titles. The career titles on this site remain student-friendly while the mappings below identify the closest current NICE component for the work emphasized on each page.

Career pageNICE v2.2.0 componentCrosswalk note
Cybersecurity AnalystPD-WRL-001 Defensive CybersecurityPrimary mapping.
Digital Forensics profileIN-WRL-002 Digital Evidence AnalysisSelected because this page emphasizes identifying, collecting, examining, and preserving evidence and investigative techniques. PD-WRL-002 is separately named Digital Forensics and focuses on analyzing digital evidence from computer security incidents.
Incident ResponderPD-WRL-003 Incident ResponsePrimary mapping.
Penetration TesterPD-WRL-007 Vulnerability AnalysisPrimary mapping for this page. Penetration Tester is a job title and may span multiple Work Roles; DD-WRL-007 Systems Testing and Evaluation can also be relevant.
Secure Software AssessorDD-WRL-005 Software Security AssessmentPrimary mapping.
Security ArchitectDD-WRL-001 Cybersecurity ArchitecturePrimary mapping.
Security EngineerDD-WRL-004 Secure Systems DevelopmentPrimary mapping for this page’s design/build focus; DD-WRL-001 may also apply to architecture-heavy positions.
Threat/Warning AnalystPD-WRL-006 Threat AnalysisPrimary mapping.
Vulnerability Assessment AnalystPD-WRL-007 Vulnerability AnalysisPrimary mapping.
Cloud SecurityNF-COM-004 Cloud SecurityThis is a NICE Competency Area, not a Work Role. Cloud-security jobs can span multiple Work Roles.
Cyber OperatorNo current NICE v2.2.0 Work Role shownThe page retains its legacy-code note and points readers to the DoD Cyber Workforce Framework (DCWF) for cyber-operations workforce mapping.

Role-specific context

The Incident Responder page cites the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 global average of $4.88 million. The Cloud Security page cites Gartner’s 13 November 2023 forecast that worldwide public-cloud end-user spending would total $678.8 billion in 2024. That Gartner figure is presented as a forecast, not as a measured 2024 actual.

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