Developing your career in cyber
Are you interested in a career in Cyber Security?
There are many roles in Cyber Security, and many different career backgrounds can position you for a career in Cyber Security. Cyber Security officers are focused on ensuring the security of information, and to do this they consider three key aspects of information security:
Confidentiality - Who has access to the information, and should they have access?
Integrity - Can the information be trusted, or could someone tamper with it?
Availability - Can I find and use the information I need, when I need it?
Cyber Security needs to be built into systems, it needs to be a part of processes, and it needs to be understood and important to people so they treat information with care and security in mind. It isn't about stopping people using information, but it is about ensuring they can get to the information they need, and they can trust it when they do.
Because of this, Cyber Security officers may focus on many different aspects of security, including among other things:
- ensuring systems that are developed or deployed have appropriate security architecture in place, including strong technical controls
- configuring and managing application, network and storage systems
- ensuring that the business processes that use and modify information are designed with security in mind and that risks are identified and managed
- raising awareness of cyber security, training staff on appropriate policy and workplace behaviours including day to day actions that they can take that ensure that the information they use is kept secure
- resolving security incidents or analysing data looking for suspicious trends or events
- testing systems to find and resolve vulnerabilities.
Cyber Security officers can therefore come from a range of backgrounds, including strong technical roles in technology and network support, application design, policy development, organisational change management and communications, risk management, data analysis, problem management, or enterprise or solution architecture just to name a few.
More than a specific background, to be successful in Cyber Security you need to have a passion for security and a desire to continually learn and develop new skills. See below to discover more on how to become a Cyber Warrior.