CIOs will earn $277,700 on average in 2016, survey shows

The average CIO will make $277,700 this year, according to the 2016 State of the CIO Survey. IT executives at enterprises with 1,000 or more employees earn $401,500, on average, compared to $189,420 at companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.

Regardless of company size, however, strategic CIOs are likely to earn significantly more: an average $167,000 more than functional CIOs and an average $127,000 more than transformational CIOs. Strategic CIOs are also significantly more likely to report to the CEO, authors of the study say.

Some 84% of CIOs agree the role is becoming more important to their business. But CIOs who spend most of their time on strategic activities or who are concentrating on transforming business operations are significantly more likely (87 percent) to say so than functional IT leaders (78 percent), who have a more traditional role managing IT operations.

By contrast, an average hacker earns less than $30,000 a year from malicious activities, which is a quarter of a cybersecurity professional’s average wage, and a tenth of what CIOs gain, according to HOTforSecurity.

IT executives report that improving cybersecurity ranks third on the list of goals their CEOs have set for them personally (29%), behind completing a major enterprise project (40%) and reaching a specific revenue goal (32%). In 2014, beefing up cybersecurity ranked eighth, the report shows.