aleya
What kinds of things do people do in Cyber Security?
I have heard that they hack into a server for weaknesses in it, so they can make the server more safe from attacks. Is there more to it? #technology #cyber-security #computer-security
7 answers
Mnason Pattan
Mnason’s Answer
On a board view, I would classify cybersecurity related jobs into these,
Offensive security jobs - Where someone tries to test if the security solutions in an organisation would actually hold up if a hacker were to attack. Ethical hackers, penetration testers work around this. This category would also include exposing vulnerabilities in computer systems or products
Defensive security jobs - Where someone builds solutions or supports solutions that protect against threats, attacks or enforce some security policy
Incident Response jobs - Where someone monitors for a "security event" from any of the solutions and responds to stop the attack or contain it
Advisory jobs - Where someone actually develops the security policy, performs an assessment if the policy is enforced by the solution and recommend governance models or processes.
Jess Elcan
Jess’s Answer
Some aspects of cyber security does deal with trying to anticipate threats to servers/systems and working to prevent those. There's also identity management which ensures that certain people on the internet have specific privileges, and that others do not. For example, the CEO of a company will have different privileges than an administrator or someone outside of the company.
As others mentioned - there are many forms of what "security" means to a company. It is a growing industry because the more people use the internet and technology to enable business...the more at risk they are to experiencing a security breach. Companies work to protect the sensitive data of their organization (example: a patients file at a hospital) in many ways! They work to protect the security of the servers, network, databases, parameters and so forth.
Don Lewis
Don’s Answer
For example, industry analysts spend time learning all about the latest hackers activities and about those who troll the Dark Web. They study hacker methods for accessing networks and stealing data -- personally identifiable information (PII) such as social security numbers and credit card numbers and then make business recommendations for how companies should modify their solutions to protect their network and that of their customers. When they are successful in doing that, it helps protect against attacks and a company data breach.
Another example are marketing professionals who help companies share information for how the solutions their companies make will help businesses or consumers be protected against cybersecurity threats -- these jobs focus on writing content for the companies website or creating online or printed brochures and other documents used by sales representatives or developing a story that can be shared with the Press / Media.
Lastly, there are those who specialize in training. Many companies develop cybersecurity training programs just like they would develop other employee safety programs. These trainers help tell the story of current cyber threats, and teach employees how to be safe when using their computers (i.e. setting up passwords, learning how to spot a spam or phishing email that trys to trick the user to click on something that will let a hacker into the company network or download malware or virus into the network as the start of an attack that could lead to a potential data breach).
If you want to learn more about the Cybersecurity industry, here are some useful resources to check out:
Latest security threats: https://www.welivesecurity.com/
Research on successful past data breaches: https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/
Cybersecurity jobs: https://www.cybersecurityeducation.org/careers/
Rudy Bauer
Rudy’s Answer
Short answer: Defensive, Offensive, Development, Consulting, Mitigation
Long answer:
From the perspective of an R&D organization, the activities are very diverse.
1. Understand industry trends in security technologies
2. Gather threat intelligence data and assess risk to products or technologies
3. Architect, Design and Implement new security features in the products
4. Validate security resiliency (hack, penetration testing, feature validation)
5. Mitigate vulnerabilities found by others or internal
Some, like #3 require deep technical engineering skills in electrical, mechanical, compute, software development
Others require intuition, research methodology, organizational and persistence skills
overall it is a great field and I encourage you to learn more, it can be very rewarding
hope this helps
shashidhara gowda
shashidhara’s Answer
Cybersecurity is the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. In a computing context, security includes both cybersecurity and physical security.
Denise Cleaver
Denise’s Answer
When it comes to Cyber Security there are many different job. Yes, so do test servers for vulnerabilities. This is done to expose those vulnerabilities so that they can be remediated before threat actors expose them in a harmful way. There is also security in all phases of the SDLC. It is securities job to educate its users to company on polices dealing with data and how it is handled and secured. So there are many different job in Cyber Security, some dealing with policies and other with risk and vulnerabilities.
Bettina Tornow
Bettina’s Answer
It really depends on what you want to do as well. It starts by educating business about vulnerabilities, to helping them be more secure and managing their security solutions. So it can be very technical but for us who work in cyber security it is also a lot about education because often companies are not even aware of the risks that are out there.