The global cybersecurity market is experiencing rapid growth and is expected to continue growing. It is dominating the priorities of every organisation as more cyber attackers are developing new ways to access sensitive systems and information. These attacks are becoming more common and may impact businesses negatively, resulting in financial loss and reputational damage.
High-profile corporations like Google, Cisco and Amazon are large recruiters of cybersecurity experts. There are many cybersecurity positions in the industry, but a few common ones are cybersecurity analysts, cybersecurity engineers, and software developers.
With lucrative opportunities and a fulfilling career, perhaps you might be thinking of joining the cybersecurity industry as well. To help you get started, here are some skills you need to succeed!
Problem-solving skills
Problem-solving is an important skill for everyone to have, especially if you are choosing a career in cybersecurity. When a security disaster occurs, a person must have the ability to visualise, articulate, conceptualise and solve the issue with the given information. Problem-solving isn’t only about finding a solution; it is also identifying vulnerabilities before attacks happen. It is helpful to have good problem-solving skills that make use of analytic thinking to address complex information security challenges!
Technical skills
The main purpose of cybersecurity is to protect and defend IT systems, digital information, networks and everything else connected to the IT infrastructure in an organisation. While the cybersecurity field is huge, many jobs share a common technical foundation. For example, IT fundamentals like system and web application administration are required for all job positions. You can gain and strengthen these skills by taking up courses like the EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA) after you have completed the Certified Ethical Hacker course (CEH). The ECSA course teaches you how to use the skills you have learnt during the CEH course to apply them to real-life scenarios through the penetration testing methodology.
Soft skills
As a cybersecurity professional, you will be working with many people in other roles and departments. Communication is important as you must be able to articulate the problem and discuss the possible solutions with them. You must have the ability to convey complex concepts, both written and verbally to your co-workers or clients! Good communication skills include seeing things in other perspectives and pointing out the relevance to different groups.
Management skills
At some point in your career, you may be tasked to take the lead on some projects. It could be a system upgrade, web application assessments, or network vulnerability assessments. This requires you to influence people and strategise who should work on specific objectives. To be effective, you must have strong relationship-building skills, which is related to your knowledge, empathy, and ethics. There are courses like Agile, DevOps, and Prince2 foundation certification that covers various approaches to project management. DevOps Foundation is recommended for everyone as it is designed for a broad audience! It helps you understand the flow of work between software developers and IT operations professionals.
Conclusion
While some of these skills above are ones that you might naturally have, there are ones that you need to develop and learn through some courses. Getting an Agile certification or Prince2 certification in Singaporecan help you. If you’re interested in a career fighting cybercrime, we are running a promotion for some of our courses, including for CEH, DevOps, Agile foundation, and many more! Singaporeans and PRs can enjoy up to 90% subsidy support.
