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What do you find exciting about working in cybersecurity?
What kind of people do you think should go into this field?
#technology #cybersecurity #JULY20
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4 answers
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Brad’s Answer
Great question Sibel.
I think the right person is one whose attitude is focused on tackling the next challenge. This is not a job for someone who is happy doing the same things day after day. The Cybersecurity field is incredibly active and changes occur, often, within hours. If you like problem solving, medium to ridiculous pressures to resolve problems, developing creative solutions to difficult problems, looking for trends, analyzing disparate data stores, then you are the right person for the role. It's a fast moving, challenging industry, but, one that can be very satisfying and lead to many different kinds of projects.
Good Luck!
Check to see if you local government is looking to fill internships. Even though the high profile work gets a lot of attention, your town or city needs just as much help.
I think the right person is one whose attitude is focused on tackling the next challenge. This is not a job for someone who is happy doing the same things day after day. The Cybersecurity field is incredibly active and changes occur, often, within hours. If you like problem solving, medium to ridiculous pressures to resolve problems, developing creative solutions to difficult problems, looking for trends, analyzing disparate data stores, then you are the right person for the role. It's a fast moving, challenging industry, but, one that can be very satisfying and lead to many different kinds of projects.
Good Luck!
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Updated
Kevin’s Answer
I work in the areas of Incident Response so my response is tailored to this area of cybersecurity. For me, I appreciate the notion of being on my toes all the time and being pushed into high stress situations to help respond to and contain information security issues for the company. Additionally, knowing that I am helping protect the Disney magic is icing on the cake. Everyone time I go to the parks, I remind myself why I put in the hours I do.
In general, IR has quiet spells here and there but more often, days can be long as we support the company 24x7. I’ve worked incidents where the team only sleep a few hours a day and commonly cancelling vacations or days off to help out. It requires a lot of flexibility and patience but I enjoy the adrenaline rush when we have an event to respond to. On the flip side of that, I get the luxury of having a very flexible work schedule and being able to work from just about anywhere. I don’t have a routine office schedule and can adjust as needed to balance out family time or obligations. With the pandemic, our entire team functions without a hitch with the work from home option.
Secondly, every incident is a bit different and demands a fairly diverse background of business and technical knowledge to properly engage. Career wise, I’ve never focused on a particular specialty within IT. I’ve dabbed into application development early in my career (enough to read code) and then moved onto the networking/infrastructure side of the house a few days afterwards before I eventually settled on program and project management. I since pivoted to cybersecurity in 2013 and pooled all my experiences for my currently role. In looking back, this has proven advantageous. I’m comfortable enough to carry conversations with developers and engineers to understand the issue at end and drive response actions. I enjoy being a "jack of all trades".
In general, IR has quiet spells here and there but more often, days can be long as we support the company 24x7. I’ve worked incidents where the team only sleep a few hours a day and commonly cancelling vacations or days off to help out. It requires a lot of flexibility and patience but I enjoy the adrenaline rush when we have an event to respond to. On the flip side of that, I get the luxury of having a very flexible work schedule and being able to work from just about anywhere. I don’t have a routine office schedule and can adjust as needed to balance out family time or obligations. With the pandemic, our entire team functions without a hitch with the work from home option.
Secondly, every incident is a bit different and demands a fairly diverse background of business and technical knowledge to properly engage. Career wise, I’ve never focused on a particular specialty within IT. I’ve dabbed into application development early in my career (enough to read code) and then moved onto the networking/infrastructure side of the house a few days afterwards before I eventually settled on program and project management. I since pivoted to cybersecurity in 2013 and pooled all my experiences for my currently role. In looking back, this has proven advantageous. I’m comfortable enough to carry conversations with developers and engineers to understand the issue at end and drive response actions. I enjoy being a "jack of all trades".
Updated
Dilasha’s Answer
Hi Sibel,
There are many areas one can work in within cybersecurity (e.g. data security, cyber intelligence, pen testing, vulnerability management, application security, anti-money laundering, etc.) There is something for everyone to enjoy!
What I enjoyed the most about cybersecurity was learning about the different types of threat actors there were and relating it to security incidents that had occurred or were occurring. I also enjoyed training others on tools that could be used to secure their applications.
I also knew folks who worked as ethical hackers and it was very exciting for them when they found vulnerabilities in a system that they could exploit as their detective work made a big difference.
There are many areas in cybersecurity; if you are a person who generally thinks about ways to secure information, things that could go wrong with technology, things you can do to help secure information, emerging technologies and how can it be used for good or bad, malicious actors and their schemes, etc, cybersecurity will be an exciting path.
There are many areas one can work in within cybersecurity (e.g. data security, cyber intelligence, pen testing, vulnerability management, application security, anti-money laundering, etc.) There is something for everyone to enjoy!
What I enjoyed the most about cybersecurity was learning about the different types of threat actors there were and relating it to security incidents that had occurred or were occurring. I also enjoyed training others on tools that could be used to secure their applications.
I also knew folks who worked as ethical hackers and it was very exciting for them when they found vulnerabilities in a system that they could exploit as their detective work made a big difference.
There are many areas in cybersecurity; if you are a person who generally thinks about ways to secure information, things that could go wrong with technology, things you can do to help secure information, emerging technologies and how can it be used for good or bad, malicious actors and their schemes, etc, cybersecurity will be an exciting path.
Updated
Libby’s Answer
Hello! I love the cybersecurity field. It is a portion of what I sell at Verizon, but nonetheless, very interesting. I enjoy problem solving and "fixing things" for my customers, so I would say someone who enjoys those activities. Also, you learn all the devious ways that criminals work to infiltrate a network. That investigative research also interests me. Cybersecurity is constantly changing as are the trends, so I would also say flourishing in a everchanging field is important as well.
Please let me know if you have other questions.
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