As you might have noticed that with this gradual and sudden shift of organizations and businesses towards adopting cloud technology, the need for cybersecurity professionals is now more than ever. Today almost every business is connected to the internet which means an increased risk of getting hacked or being conflicted with cyber-security breaches. That is where the need for a cybersecurity professional or cyber defender emerges. For those who don’t know anything about a cyber defender, let’s have a clear-cut idea;
Who is a cyber defender?
A cyber defender or a cybersecurity professional is an expert who has a meticulous skill set that is customized to identification, separation, and elimination of the cyber threats that are being faced by the businesses and organizations. A cybersecurity professional is not in charge of installing new and better security interface for an organization but also strengthen the notion of the security they share along with the third-party vendors. If something goes wrong with the security definition of your company, these professionals will help you. If you think that your security or data has been compromised then these professionals will run various diagnostics tests while working as Ethical hackers or penetration testers.
So, in literal terms, a cyber defender is an individual whose job is to protect your data, corporate information as well as secured systems from getting hacked or falling to some other abyss.
How to become one?
This is a question many professionals out there ask themselves; how to become a cybersecurity professional? Well in order to begin with this crusade you will have to choose a particular skill that you are good at. Such as you can go for multiple certifications out there regarding cybersecurity. But not all of these certifications are not that optimized as the others but comes with a particular preset. Such as many certifications would require you to have some educational background in computing or other fields of cybersecurity.
While others would require that you have some experience on hand for indulging or enrolling yourself in those certifications. So, here is a list of the top five most competitive certifications out there that you might be interested in;
List of courses
- Certified ethical hacker
- CompTIA Security+
- CISSP or certified information system security professional
- CISM or certified information security manager
- CISA or certified information systems auditor
So, now when you have a complete list of all the cybersecurity certifications with you then let's begin on the quest of finding out what each and every one of these entails;
CEH—Certified ethical hacker
Ethical hacking is an enormous field with much to give, first of all, you will be trained as a professional hacker but on the ethical side of things. This means that you will be thinking like an ethical hacker when performing penetration testing or cracking tasks for the sake of ensuring that particular business or organization has an optimum definition of security. Thinking like a cybercriminal is essential for you to put a stop to all of these attacks that keep on happening. Security manager, intrusion analyst, and penetration tester are some of the careers that you can explore once you have decided to set foot with the certified ethical hacker certification.
CompTIA Security+
CompTIA Security+ certification primarily trains a professional for installing and configuring various digital systems such as instating networks, building firewalls around the security system of an organization, building applications, and devices. Professionals will also get a chance to get along with threat analysis for the sake of measuring the current volume of the threat being faced by the organization and what can be done to mitigate it. Other mitigation of various risks also takes place here as they will continue to learn the effect a particular risk has over compromising the security of an organization or involving in various applicable policies, laws, and regulations.
Security specialists, security managers, and security administrators are some of the career options that you can explore.
CISSP
Many IT departments consider this certification as the most needed and base requirement if you want to get ahead with the networking side of things. CISSP mainly deals with networking security and manages the security of all the devices that are connected to a particular network. This certification will make you a professional for the sake of developing or designing the architecture of your organization that is a secure business environment for your organization and practically involves the maintenance of these systems as well. With the help of completing this certification, you can essentially work as an IT security manager, analyst, or security manager.
But unlike other IT or cybersecurity certifications, this specific certification requires that you have some working base knowledge with these protocols before you enroll yourself for the completion of this course.
CISM
This is a highly competitive cybersecurity certification that requires that the professional has at least five years of experience working as a cybersecurity expert with various companies or organizations. Other than that there is another requirement that involves three years of experience working as an information security manager. In addition to all this knowledge, the professional must have extracted a fair share of training from the CISM domains too. The basic artifact of the job is designing, building, and working to strengthen the overall security position of the company they are working in. CISM can expand your career and provide it the last turbo boost that it may require but at the end of the day, it is a seriously exhausting and hard endeavor to pull off.
CISA
This specific cybersecurity certification is based on the concept of information auditing. Acquiring this certification can help you to not only showcase your experience as a cybersecurity professional but also someone who has extremely powerful auditing experience too. The end job for such certification is working as an auditor but as you can gather there are plenty of horizons that can help you to become a better professional and auditor than you ever were.
You can enroll in infosec academy's courses especially the ethical hacking training which will dynamically brighten up your career and future as a cyber defender.