Find your Perfect Cybersecurity Job
With data breaches, cyberattacks and other threats continuing to wreak havoc across every market and industry, demand for cybersecurity skills has never been higher. Making a career shift toward the cybersecurity field can be both extremely rewarding and lucrative, especially in today’s threat landscape.
Neil Daswani, co-director of the Stanford Advanced Cybersecurity Program, has years of hands-on experience in this field and a long track record of success. He recently conducted a webinar to give pointers to anyone considering a career in cybersecurity. His expert advice could help you get your foot in the door and land your first cybersecurity job.
Identify the right role for your skill set
Cybersecurity is a very broad field with a lot of different roles and responsibilities. It’s important to know what you’re looking for in a cybersecurity job, as well as what skills and experience you can bring to the table, to narrow down your search and find the perfect position for your talents.
The good news is skills from positions in both tech and non-tech industries can carry over to security-focused jobs. An IT system administrator or network engineer, for instance, is probably going to be a good fit for an analytical position that requires a great deal of knowledge about the inner workings of IT environments. The skills that set apart good product managers and project managers in non-tech environments apply to those same roles in the cybersecurity world. You may find that you don’t necessarily need an enormous amount of hands-on technical or IT experience to break into these kinds of positions.
Learn the fundamentals of your ideal job
Even if you don’t have a background in IT, you can still work your way toward a technical cybersecurity position. You may need more education, but there are several Stanford online courses that can help lay that foundation. In the webinar, Daswani highlights some of the core subjects and skills needed to excel in three common cybersecurity roles: security operations center (SOC) analyst, security architect and chief information security officer (CISO). Depending on the type of role you want to land, there’s a different path to follow. For example, SOC analysts should be familiar with Matasploit, a widely-used cybersecurity tool, and understand the SOAR framework. Security architects will want to hone their software development, programming and engineering skills and become familiar with security design. Chief information security officers might want to develop a few domain “spikes” in different sub-areas of information security as well as gain experience doing some of the hands-on work your team members perform.
Watch the full webinar to get more details, and check out some of the tips offered during the Q&A session.
Earn the best cybersecurity certification to support your career
If you’ve spent any time looking around at your professional development certification options, then you have no doubt noticed that there are plenty of programs to choose from. It’s important to find the right certification for your needs, skill level and experience. Stanford provides a wide range of security certifications, with the Stanford Foundations of Information Security program providing a holistic overview of security concepts while more advanced curriculums dig deeper into the concepts, knowledge and capabilities you’ll need to fill specific roles.
For instance, the Stanford Advanced Cybersecurity program covers both cybersecurity and executive strategy, making it an ideal fit for prospective CISOs. Take a look at what every program offers to be sure it will provide the education you need to break into cybersecurity. It’s never too late to make a move to this exciting and rewarding field.
