CompTIA CySA+

This is CompTIA's mid-level defensive cert, the step up from Security+ for people building SOC careers. The catch is where it sits: this is the tier of security work most exposed to AI automation.

Mostly SOC analysts and threat-detection staff — the people doing alert triage, log analysis and incident-response support. They tend to work at MSSPs, enterprise SOCs and government suppliers.

Its pay premium fell 30% to 55% over the 24 months to April 1, 2026, and the verdict moves down one notch to UPGRADE: jobs still ask for it, but employers have stopped paying extra for it. Tier-1/2 analysis is exactly what Security Copilot-class tooling is built to take on, so the move is upward, toward the CISSP track, cloud security, or detection engineering.

The clear threat is SOC automation. Vendors say plainly that AI triage cuts the number of analysts a given alert volume needs. Analysts who shift toward engineering the detections, rather than working them, stay ahead of it.