How To Become A Cybersecurity Professional?

Verzeo
6 min readMay 12, 2022
How To Become A Cybersecurity Professional? — Verzeo

From 2019 to 2021, COVID had spread across the world, and many companies, organisations, and institutions had undergone numerous cyber threats more than ever before.

These threats can weaponise cloud resources that make networks even more vulnerable.

As a result, there are many job opportunities for those who have the right skill sets.

In the year 2021, security professionals had to collaborate more than ever with their businesses due to a lack of security.

As per the recent study by ISC, despite pandemic pressures, organisations plan to increase cybersecurity staffing in the next 12 months.

So, Now let us see how to become a cybersecurity professional.

Let us begin with the meaning of Cybersecurity, right!

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Key Takeaways

  • Meaning & importance of Cybersecurity.
  • Difference between Cybersecurity, Network Security and Information security.
  • The definition of a Cybersecurity engineer and skills that are required.
  • Qualification to become a Cyber Security engineer.
  • Jobs and salary of a cybersecurity engineer.

What is Cybersecurity?

What is Cybersecurity?

It is a practice of protecting the system and network from digital attacks.

If you are looking for a definition here, it is,

“Cybersecurity entails the safeguarding of computer networks and the information they contain from penetration and from malicious damage or disruption.” by Lewis 2006

Here are some of the importance of Cybersecurity.

Importance of CyberSecurity

  1. Cybersecurity is important in different sectors like government financial organizations, startups, medium and large enterprises and even personnel.
  2. Educate yourself with the terms phishing, ransomware, Man-in-the-middle, SQL Injections, password attack and many more.
  3. It could save millions of Dollars — According to recent studies, cybercrime for an organization was about USD$10 million.
  4. The Dark Web is a secret collaboration of many internet sites and is only accessible through specialized browsers. It is mainly used for hiding Internet activities and keeping users anonymous.

Never get confused between cyber security and Information Security or Network Security.

Let me give you the difference between all these securities.

Difference between CyberSecurity Vs Network Security Vs Information Security

Cybersecurity

Main Focus on Online threats

Cybersecurity professionals learn to think like a hacker

Should understand the malicious activities in depth

Acts like front line defence

Phishing and pretexting

Network Security

Network security emphasises attack recognition, security architecture and network optimisation.

Main responsibilities are maintaining systems, identifying vulnerabilities and improving automation.

Oversee the maintenance of firewalls, routers, switches and various monitoring tools.

Make a strategy to recover from the network breach (Main midline defence)

Virus and Worms

Information Security

Focus on unauthorised monitor access, modification and denial of network access

Information security professionals work to protect the intangible infrastructure of the organisation

Should analyse how to tackle key distribution, hashing and symmetric encryption.

Act as the last line of defence

Disruption or destruction

Now, you have got the meaning and differences between securities.

Let me provide you with in-depth details of a security engineer, the skill set required, qualifications, courses on Cybersecurity and most important Jobs & salary.

Read More: What is Ethical Hacking

Who is a Cyber Security Engineer?

Who is a Cyber Security Engineer?

As we discussed before, the engineer who is responsible for maintaining the security aspects of computer & network systems is performing various tasks such as implementing secure network solutions, monitoring and troubleshooting to avoid any cyberattacks.

What does a CyberSecurity Engineer Do?

The roles and responsibilities include

  1. Responding to all security breaches to the network associated.
  2. Troubleshooting all securities.
  3. Conducting testing and scans to identify any vulnerabilities.
  4. Active role in the change management process and breach investigation.
  5. Daily penetration testing.

To become professional in this type of work, you have to acquire some skills.

Skills Required to Become a Cyber Security Engineer

To be a successful cybersecurity engineer must display an excellent understanding of technology like Firewalls, VPNs, Data Loss Prevention, Web-Proxy and Security Audits.

  1. Desire to Learn.
  2. Technical Aptitude and problem-solving skills.
  3. Fundamental Cyber Forensics skills.
  4. Ability to make decisions and show initiative.
  5. Able to work efficiently under pressure and schedule deadlines.
  6. Ability to work creatively and think out of the box.
  7. Strong communication skills.
  8. Clear understanding skills, i.e. the ability to understand confidentiality issues and laws.
  9. Understand Hacking.

As you got, who is actually the cybersecurity engineer, their skill sets and what do they work on? Now let’s see the qualifications required to become a cyber security engineer.

Cybersecurity Engineer Qualifications

  1. Bachelor’s Degree in Computer science or IT.
  2. Minimum two years experience in cybersecurity-related industries such as fraud analysis, incident detection and forensics.
  3. Minimum 1-year experience with functionality, operations and maintenance of firewalls and various forms of security.
  4. Programming proficiency in C++, Java, Node JS, Python, Ruby or Go
  5. Up to date, latest cyber security trends and tactics.

Note: These are some general qualifications different organisations need different capabilities.

Cybersecurity Job Roles and Responsibilities

These are a few main cybersecurity jobs that are of utmost required for companies to develop.

I hope you get my point!

  1. Cybersecurity generalist — The freshers can take some experience.
  2. Network Security Engineer — Managing the company’s network security from routers to VPNs.
  3. Application Security Analyst — This job includes protecting applications from threats using a mix of hardware and software skills.
  4. Cyber Fraud Analyst — In this job, analysts need to protect company hardware software and networks from cybercrime.
  5. Security Architect — It is involved in designing, building, and managing network and computer security implementation for companies.
  6. Penetration Tester — Legally hack into software systems to identify vulnerabilities.
  7. Cryptographer — Involved in encrypting sensitive information to keep up corporate privacy.

Salary of a Cybersecurity Engineer

Kind Caution — Never go behind Money, but after hard work/smart work, of course, you can smile at these salary rates.

Here are some average salaries for several countries:

1) Average annual salary in India: Rs12,00,000–13,00,000

2) Average Annual salary in the US: $82,000–92,000

3) Average Annual salary in the UK: £50,000–60,000

4) Average Annual salary in the Germany: €60,700–80,000

Conclusion

In this world, every company & government needs cybersecurity professionals in today’s digital era!

If you are skilled and have relevant experience, you can skyrocket on all your opportunities and, of course, become very rich.

Let us know if you are a beginner. We would let you develop in Cybersecurity.

Whew! It seems like I covered a lot. I hope that this blog has given you extra knowledge on Cybersecurity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I know before learning Cyber security?

Understand the design, management, and management of applications, networks, and virtualization software. Individual applications are web-based interfaces — a good idea of ​​how these apps work will help your repository.

How long does IT take to learn Cyber security?

It can take anywhere between six months to two years to learn online safety. This depends on your learning style, as some require more time than others. Coding boot camps, for example, can take between six months to a year, and college can take up to five years.

Is Cyber security complex?

Learning Cybersecurity can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you like technology. Increase your curiosity about the skills you work with, and you may find that challenging skills become more straightforward.

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