It’s 3 a.m. and what’s left of the pizza is cold. There are a few partially drunk energy drinks on a table. In the dim light, the figure – head concealed in a dark hoodie – pecks away at a keyboard. Click, click, click.
Enough. I can’t take it. Pizza? Energy drinks? Dark hoodie? Why is the hacker stereotype – a loner wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting via an Internet connection – always associated with cybersecurity? Not all cybersecurity professionals are hackers nor are they “techies”.
Today marks the midway point of National Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week #NCCAW. It’s easy to say that cybersecurity touches every part of our work and personal lives nowadays, but what does that really mean? What is cybersecurity and what do cybersecurity professionals do?
Cybersecurity is the practice of defending or protecting the integrity of systems and data from attack or unauthorized access. That definition is pretty broad, but then again, cybersecurity encompasses many domains. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Henry Jiang’s Cybersecurity Map 2.0.
Where can you find cybersecurity professionals? Well, they work at Fortune 500 companies and for government agencies. They also help small businesses and consumers.
What do they do? They are members of incident response teams, security analysts, infrastructure and security engineers, IT risk and governance specialists, and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). They are also network security solution architects, information assurance engineers, and cyber threat intel analysts.
Now that you know what cybersecurity is and what cybersecurity professionals do, why not think about a career in cybersecurity?