Anyone paying attention to the tech headlines in recent years will have noticed that cybersecurity is becoming one of the key concerns of businesses worldwide.
Ransomware attacks are rising, fraud and scams are reaching record levels, and cybercriminals are using ever-more advanced tactics to rob people and businesses of their cash.
In an effort to reduce this, a new cohort of cybersecurity professionals is desperately needed in the world of business, which is why those with these skills are set to do particularly well in the remainder of this decade. Here’s how you can join them.
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Training
Of course, you cannot set yourself up as a working cybersecurity professional without first having some training and qualifications in the field.
Some individuals choose to go to college or university to pick up the skills required to perform this job role, while others rely on books, online resources, and digital courses to help them gather the requisite knowledge and experience.
Just remember that firms tend to trust those with qualifications, so getting accredited, if you’re going down the independent learning route, will be essential if you’re to get a good job after you’ve learned the ropes in cybersecurity.
Finding a Job
There are always hundreds of jobs in cybersecurity, many of them remote and some of them for agencies that offer their services in an outsourced capacity.
If you’re looking for a role that will put your new-found skills to the test, you could do worse than going through a recruitment agency or jobs site that specialises in these kinds of roles.
Search these platforms for a role as a cyber security analyst, and you’ll unearth excellent opportunities, including for junior workers who are setting out to find their first job in the industry.
Continued Education
One of the thrilling aspects of working in the cybersecurity field is that you are always required to stay up to date with the latest emerging threats. These might include threats that are being developed by criminals behind the scenes and those that are proving to be most popular at any given moment.
Your continued education might involve learning new coding languages or attending conferences at which the industry shares its intelligence and discusses the best tactics to bring down cyber criminals.
In this industry, you feel a real sense of working on the cutting edge, and the financial rewards, in terms of your pay and benefits, will match the effort you put into your career.
Research and Analysis
There’s another side to your continued development as a cybersecurity operative, and that’s researching or analysing trends and tactics yourself.
More junior staff tend to focus on the research and analysis of others, which means they’re a little further down the knowledge chain.
As you get more senior, you’re able to produce knowledge yourself, which means that you can become a thought leader in your space, gaining respect among your peers as you do so.
Consulting
As you become a thought leader or someone who is pushing the conversation further forwards, you’ll always have the opportunity to move from full-time work into consulting.
This can be difficult to achieve for those without an industry reputation but fairly easy for those who do have a reputation and are able to leverage their networks in order to drum up work.
Cybersecurity consulting tends to be something you can do throughout your career, whether you choose to stop working in an in-house role or you continue your role while conducting extra work on the side.
Senior Roles
Once you have been working in the field for a number of years, learning from your experiences and taking time outside of work to keep up to date with developing threats, you’ll be well placed to land yourself a senior role, perhaps in a large global company.
These roles can pay upwards of six-figure salaries, placing you in a team of motivated, hard-working and intelligent people who are protecting some of the most important companies on Earth. For many in cybersecurity, this is the pinnacle of the job: the exciting peak of their efforts to train in the field.
Make yourself a fantastic cybersecurity professional and get a rewarding job in the field by following these simple steps to the senior levels of the hierarchy.
