Associates degrees are in essence, no better than getting a degree from ITT Tech or an Art Institute. They're entry-level degrees. Most higher paying jobs out there are going to ask for a Bachelors or Masters preferred.
I have a BA in Advertising. I work for a general contractor in their in-house marketing department. I made it my goal to find a position in exactly what I wanted to do which is creative marketing/communications. Many of my colleagues with advertising degrees that graduated near my time didn't go out and seek exactly what they wanted, instead they just took the first thing that came across them thinking "get your foot in the door and move on to what you really want to do", doesn't work that way.
I have a friend that has a marketing degree, he has yet to do anything with it. He started working at Dell doing customer service taking computer orders over the phone, then moved to AT&T and became a call center supervisor, then a team leader for the call center, and now he's an account executive for AT&T wifi for a hotel client...still not doing a single thing with marketing. Sure, he's probably getting paid decent, and he seems to be climbing the positional ladder, but everytime he tries to get into the AT&T marketing department, he gets rejected. All of his experience is coming from call centers and tech support.
If you're wanting to work in IT and all you have is an associates, in my opinion, it's not going to get you very far. My IT department director has a masters in computer science. The lower level people have associates degrees, and who knows how long it will take them to ever get to a director position because they lack the degree.
Sounds like you want to work in cyber security, I suggest really going to a four-year college and getting a computer science degree (I assume that's applicable to what you want to do).
To those saying it's experience that counts and not the education...I question if you've job searched lately because for most business-related jobs whether it's sales, marketing, advertising, business development, and even tech-related jobs, they all want to see a four year degree and many of them are preferring the masters.