What do you think makes you a great professional? Is it your credentials? Is it your confidence? Is it your behaviour? Or is it your communication skills? Well, it is a blend of many things that makes you a distinguished professional in your industry. In this article, we will talk about the skills that make you a great cyber security professional. Hint: It is not just your reputed ethical hacking training that will decide how well you will do in your career. It is more than that!
Table of Contents
1. Empathy
To be a great cyber security professional, you must have empathy for those whom you are trying to protect. Just like a doctor has empathy for their patients who need help, you must have a genuine reason to care and protect those who need your help.
2. Communication
Good communication can seal the deal in any situation. Being a highly technical job, information security requires professionals who are adept in good communication skills to explain technical problems to non-technical people so that everyone understands what’s going on and everyone stays on the same page. In non-IT industries, only good communicators can convince management to make decisions favouring cybersecurity by speaking in their language.
3. Integrity
Having integrity is one of the topmost skills that define your worth as a cybersecurity professional. Also established as one of the pillars of the CIA triangle, (along with confidentiality and availability), this skill is more of a nature that can be polished with time and effort. Without integrity in your work, you cannot be trusted with someone’s security as it is a highly sensitive affair.
4. Mental agility
Mental agility is defined as the ability to understand complex problems easily and to connect things that others may not be able to. This skill plays a crucial role in this profession as you will be required to solve serious and complex security problems every day at work.
5. Meticulousness
Having an eye for detail is what gives you the ability to notice loopholes that hackers spend 24 hours of their day finding. Your ability to be precise and accurate in writing scripts and executing complicated exploits can allow you to be extra efficient in your work, thus eliminating any errors and room for improvement.
6. Growth mindset
Having a growth mindset is extremely important to succeed in cybersecurity. Whether it is upgrading your certification from CEH course to CPENT or LPT, or keeping up with industry trends and news or taking more responsibility and leading your team, a growth mindset is absolutely necessary to level up your career and transform you from a good to a great professional.
7. Positive attitude
Cyber attacks are not pretty and they can make you feel discouraged or depressed very fast. Although every profession requires you to have a positive attitude, it comes in more than handy when we talk about cybersecurity. Having a positive, friendly and problem solving attitude makes you more approachable by your fellow workers in case of any security issue.
In the end, remember that your career will progress based on your skills and your skills alone. Everything else is external. Whatever happens outside your ability of control should not affect your job and your growth. Give everything your 100%, don’t be afraid to go the extra mile and never stress about the results. If you really want to become a great cybersecurity professional, then you should learn from those who have walked the rope and emerged as victors.
P.S. Don’t forget to visit the graveyard as it turns out that those who failed also have equally valuable lessons to teach you.
