Navigating the Cybersecurity Career Path

CHAPTER 5What Skills Should I Have?

Summary

• Know yourself: Based on your strengths and desired roles, choose a piece of the technology stack to begin your technical skills training. Plan on focusing there for at least a year or two.
• Know yourself more: How is your emotional intelligence? Get feedback from co-workers, friends, and family. Where do you need to grow?
• Network: Ask your network what kinds of skills they think you need for the kinds of jobs you want to get. Practice presenting security topics in front of them.

The pursuit of security knowledge and applying that knowledge for security skills is part of every security role at every level of an organization. When seeking a security job for the first time, it is important to know which skills to have and the order in which to learn them.

There are many security leaders who value candidates who start with a generic technical or business background before moving into security. Many hiring managers feel that security is inherently not an entry-level role. Instead, these hiring managers think being an analyst or engineer requires general technology skills and business experience that are found outside the security function. As more schools offer security degrees and certificates, this might change. Regardless, finding a candidate who has spent time building networks, coding, or working on a help desk is vastly superior to hiring someone straight out of school without that background.

Regardless of where you ...