Developing Key Cybersecurity Competencies
Cybersecurity is one of the fastest-growing industries, and cybersecurity skills are in high demand across different sectors. Beyond the typical information technology (IT) professionals, organizations are looking for personnel with particular skill-sets. IT professionals with these additional skills are helping organizations to confront the potential threats they face in the modern, highly competitive, and fast-paced business environment.
IT professionals with cybersecurity skills are bound to have more job opportunities in 2021 and beyond. Application development security, cloud security, risk management, threat intelligence, incident response, compliance and controls, data privacy and security, access management, security strategy and control, and health information security are ten of the fastest-growing skills in the field of cybersecurity in 2021. Application development security revolves around the aspect of ensuring that the application development process incorporates appropriate security mechanisms and controls. It included specialized occupations such as systems engineer, network architect, and software developer. Cloud security revolves around the protection of critical cloud infrastructure. Cloud security is forecasted to grow by 115% over the next 5 years. Risk management equips organizations with cybersecurity tips to deal with threats to their infrastructure. Some of the specialized roles under risk management include system engineer and network architect.
Threat intelligence experts help organizations to detect and thwart attacks. It mainly revolves around identifying and addressing system vulnerabilities that can elevate the threat level in an organization. Compliance and controls revolve around ensuring that organizations have adequate controls in place and are compliant with industry rules and regulations.
Meanwhile, data privacy and security experts are tasked with protecting organizational data and infrastructure from unauthorized access. Access management includes the processes aimed at controlling access to the organizational data and system. Access management experts are responsible for implementing policies such as the zero-trust policy to ensure that access to data and systems in an organization is controlled and authorized. Meanwhile, security strategy and control cybersecurity personnel are primarily responsible for drafting and monitoring the implementation of security controls in an organization. It also includes continuous assessment of the controls to ensure they are effective against dynamic threats. Health information security revolves around the protection of health information systems to maintain data and system integrity in the healthcare system.
As such, the skills analyzed above are ten of the rapidly growing skills in cybersecurity in 2021. The IT personnel with these skills provide organizations with cybersecurity tips to combat the modern threats they face. Cybersecurity skills are integral to business productivity and growth in this modern era when the threats of cyber-attacks and data breaches are imminent.
