As the world of business gets more and more digitized, the need for cyber security engineers grows by the day. The Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance estimates the cost of cybercrime to be around $45 billion per year. Cyber security engineers work to protect a company from expensive threats.
What Cyber Security Engineers Do
Cyber security analysts help keep organizations safe from a wide range of online threats. They also protect the networking systems that companies depend on. These systems may be simple and kept mostly in-house, but they often involve connecting to an external or wide area network (WAN). Let’s also not forget virtual systems and networks that allow employees to gain access to company data while working remotely. Even though external connections may invite more threats, an element of risk is always there.
This is where a cybersecurity professional plays a key role. Much of their job description involves performing assessments and penetration testing to limit and control the risk of cybercriminals penetrating the network. A security professional is also a main element of the overall technology team. Specifically, they use security technology to limit threats, which frees up the IT team to focus on creating secure network solutions instead of tracking down security issues.
Further, a cybersecurity professional is often responsible for engineering trusted systems into secure systems. This usually involves a complete review of a company’s networking systems to transition them from trust-based to trustless. To accomplish this, the engineer performs a full audit, intrusion analysis, and assessment of employees’ individual access rights. On the other hand, if adequate trustless security is already in place, a cybersecurity engineer may focus more on developing and implementing cybersecurity solutions. These may fit the existing security architecture or require new hardware and software to protect from cyber attacks.
How Cyber Security Supports the Modern Business Landscape
The more vital elements of business shift from basic internal networks to cloud computing, the more exposure critical systems have to threats. A cyber security engineer has the skills to limit or eliminate these threats. This way, the company can carry on business without investing extra resources in recovering from attacks. Because they fulfill this crucial role, cyber security engineers are essential to the survival of modern businesses.
When a security engineer has earned the necessary credentials, they can apply their skills to a wide range of businesses. This includes finance, wholesale, retail, education, manufacturing, and more.
Requirements to Be a Cyber Security Engineer
To land a security job, you need a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in computer science. If an individual already has several years of experience in cyber security and augments that work experience with continual training, that will also help them qualify for a position.
Many companies these days will overlook your lack of a computer science degree provided you have relevant cyber security certifications like Security+, CEH, CISSP etc. Even if you do have a computer science degree, professional certificates are a MUST.
What Is a Cyber Security Engineer Responsible for?
The job of a cyber security engineer varies widely from company to company. However, there are certain things that all digital security professionals have in common.
Protecting the Organization from Data Breaches and Leaks
A company’s data is often its most valuable asset. A special element of a cyber security engineer’s job is to make sure data is secure, reliable, and accurate.
This involves keeping data behind firewalls that protect it from exfiltration. Also, to maintain that data’s accuracy, companies must protect it from those who want to alter it to harm the business or benefit the competition. In addition, a security engineer makes sure that only users who need to access certain areas have the clearance to do so. In this way, the number of people who use or see sensitive data is minimized, thereby reducing the threat of a breach or leak.
Preventing the Misuse of Sensitive Data
The data held by a company may be vulnerable to attackers, who can use it in various ways. Often, an organization keeps proprietary information regarding critical elements of its technology or business model. If someone were to steal that info, it could give their competition a significant advantage. Further, a competitor could misuse the plans a company has to expand their services or partner with others in an attempt to gain a strategic advantage. A cyber security engineer’s job involves keeping this data from getting into the hands of malicious actors.
Unfortunately, many companies face an even bigger threat: the theft of sensitive customer information. Customers’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and answers to common security questions can all be valuable to hackers. While the hacker may not use this info themselves, they may sell it on the dark web. A cyber security engineer’s goal is to prevent the misuse of this kind of data, particularly because hackers can use it for identity theft. In some cases, a thief doesn’t need complete customer profiles — they only want certain elements to correlate with other information they already have. For this reason, even companies with basic customer info in their systems require the services of a cyber security engineer.
