[trash_panda]

Of course, you're welcome. I forgot to address the salary question. Six figure jobs are common in this industry, but experience is required to get those jobs. I don't personally know of anyone that did the change at your age, but a good thing is that (unless you want to go enterprise or government) the industry is not to demanding on formalities, a lot of people don't even have degrees. It's a field where it's easy to detect if someone really knows what he/she's talking about. And if someone is useful and helpful, nobody will really care your experience, academic history, etc.

If you're interested in stuff like malware analysis, then you could start doing it as a hobby and maintain a good blog where you explain all your analysis as you learn.

[tptacek]

I can easily offer an existence proof for "six figure jobs" in security that do not require previous experience in security to obtain. I don't think we're that far out of the mainstream.

(We're not competing with FAANGs for compensation, but that's not what "six figures" means).