Nearly every day goes by without hearing about an incredibly destructive ransomware attack data room M&A or sensitive data breach, that affects both individuals and businesses across all industries. Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and attack everything from credit card data to personal health records.
The job of a cybersecurity professional is to defend against these attacks by analyzing vulnerabilities and taking preventative measures. To do this well they require certain skills that are both technical and non-technical.
A cybersecurity professional must be knowledgeable of various computer systems and platforms to keep up with the most recent hacking techniques. This includes knowledge of forensic investigation, programming languages and specific tools (e.g. tools used for digital forensics and penetration testing). A cybersecurity analyst, for instance must know how IoT devices are connected to the Internet and are susceptible to hacking.
It is crucial that cybersecurity experts are able to recognize and assess the risk in their company. This is due to the limitless ways that hackers can cause issues make it impossible to defend against every threat. For example security professionals should be aware that passwords should be long, complicated and comprise the use of upper and lowercase letters, numbers as well as symbols. Also, that passwords should not contain personal information such as birthdays or the family member’s name.
To be a successful cyber-expert, you must have empathy for the victims and perpetrators of cyberattacks. This allows them to see how a cyber-hacker might think. They can then design more effective defenses.