Before proceeding to know how to become an efficient Cisco Security Engineer, we will shed some light on what a Security Engineer and what work is he responsible to do. The security engineers, as the name suggests are the professionals that work for the protection of computer and networking systems. With the increasing advancement, the hackers have gotten much more dangerous which increases the requirement of protection for data and the confidential communications carried between workers. Due to these potential hackers and the cyber-attacks, the Cisco security engineers are a lot in demand.
Cisco Security Engineer Required Skills
As for the requirements of a Security Engineer, we will divide the required skills into soft skills and hard skills. The soft skills are one which is less important compared to the other skills. These include general speaking and language skills to communicate in their complex methods and creative minds in a better way. Also, in all jobs, you are needed to write reports and papers therefore, the language skills always matter a lot. The job also requires the professional to be able to endure long working hours, stress handling and dealing with trouble immediately in all situations. A security Engineer can face numerous challenges and some of them include:
- Explain, execute and handle corporate security policies.
- Install and handle intrusion detection systems and firewalls.
- Generate new techniques to resolve problems existing in any production security issues.
- Suggest and implement modifications in technical, legal and regulatory areas which affect IT security.
- Work together with colleagues on authorization, authentication and encryption solutions.
- Discover and suggest new methods and technologies which will help in the enhancement of the security of any organization.
- Look over the changes occurring in software, telecommunications, hardware and facilities, and the end user requirements.
- Prepare formals papers and reports with all technical information on the test findings.
- Check security solutions using various methods and on basis of industry analysis criteria.
- Troubleshoot information security issues arising during various stages of any project.
- Test and analyze the vulnerability, risks, and security to ensure the best outcomes.
- Create and handle automatic scripts to handle and catch the source of incidents.
- Look in details and advise accordingly on the latest security technologies and programs conformance.
- Examine intrusion accidents, conduct forensic investigations and mount accident responses.
- Technologies of virtualization.
- Protect and design network structures.
- NAC (Network Access Controllers), (APT) Advanced Persistent Threats, social and phishing engineering, gateway anti-malware, and advanced authentications.
- Web and Network related protocols like UDP, IPSEC, HTTPS, HTTP, routing protocols, TCP/IP etc.
- MySQL/ MSSQL database platforms.
- Protected coding practice, ethical hacking, and threat modeling.
Challenges for Cisco Security Engineer
These are a few of the challenges that a Security Engineer has to cope in his/ her job. There are several classifications in the Security Engineering field, like positions which more managerial oversight and career flexibility like Security Manager, Security Architect, Security Consultant, and Security Director, CISO. To become any of this, you must initially start with basic security engineering. We will now look at the required qualifications and certifications.
How to become an efficient Cisco Security Engineer
Now we will focus on how to become an efficient Security Engineer. If we look from basics then, the education for it starts from your high school. You must have math and science subjects and of course, computer sciences which will assist you in preparing for a career as a Security Engineer. Just like any other profession, this profession also requires speaking and writing skills in order to, present your ideas in a better way to the potential clients and employers. In security engineering field there are various jobs therefore, taking accounting and marketing can help you get a job of consultation and freelancing career in the security engineering field.
Moving on the crucial part, which is to take a bachelor or associate degree from an ascribed computer science program. The courses in your bachelors might include information systems. Information technology security, computer engineering, and general computer sciences. These courses or degree is acquired from a university, community college or online classes. A graduate level program or a master’s degree in security will often offer a Master of Science degree related to information systems. Master’s degree in your CV can increase your potential for a better and more successful career. Having an additional degree is always a plus point and with the increasing competition in job markets, it has become even more important. Apart from a Master’s degree, you may go for various certifications which will greatly help you with Security Engineer. The certifications become necessary at a certain point of your career in order to have a firm and successful career, these certifications can be done from any major software companies like Cisco etc.
Opting and taking these certifications will assist you with much more security knowledge and experience of real-life incidents and of various operating systems and software. If you opt for Cisco Security certification, there are various courses available which polish your skills in an efficient way like CCNA Security certification, these sources as specifically designed according to the job of Security Engineer and include training for security in routers, switches, other networking devices and appliances along with the knowledge and practice of selecting, deploying, troubleshooting and supporting VNS, Firewalls and IDS/IPS solutions according to their networking environments.
With the above-mentioned certifications or others like Implementing Cisco Unified Communications Security v1.x, Cisco Certified Network Professional or Security Certification Boot Camp, Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Fundamentals -On Demand etc. can be extremely useful as they will polish your on-job skills, and they will also polish your working on various software and programs to troubleshoot the problems efficiently and quickly while building a better security system. The Cisco certification keeps the professional up-to-date with the advanced programs and technologies of security and what the hackers and cyber-attackers might use to invade the data or confidential information. The Security Engineering field is not yet concentrated and so, has a lot potential for the new security engineers but to ensure your position and confirm your successful career in the field you must look for multi-modality training in the related certification.