2020 brought about a technological revolution of sorts. There is no escaping the need to automate every aspect of your professional life right from project management tools to virtual reality meeting rooms. That is how the world is going to come even smaller despite people not being in the same physical space. And where there is cyber growth, there is cybersecurity jobs in demand growth. Naturally.
Incidentally, last year while many industries suffered from sluggish growth and demand for recruits, demand for cybersecurity professionals grew multifold. Presently, there are over 3.5 million professionals in the cybersecurity space. This grew over 25% as compared to the previous year. With all the advancements in technology, newer cyber threats are also advancing. And our guard against them has to be a lot stronger. Hence, the growth in demand.
How are we aware of such developments? No matter what the question. The answer is always data. It is important to understand and gauge industry trends and stay ahead of the curve. With JobsPikr’s premium scraping services, leave all the data scraping to us. You just draw insights like this and leverage the unfair advantage! So here we are going to walk you through the top five positions that prospective employees can consider as a lucrative switch in the cybersecurity (no surprises there!) space.
At the other end of the spectrum, business leaders can understand the hiring landscape as they build their cyber workforce development programs.
We at JobsPikr have mapped these job categories to specific roles within the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. There are accompanied by a comprehensive understanding of the KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities) required of each position.
Systems Engineer
This job title is fairly open-ended. It is also sometimes listed as a Systems Analyst or an IT Business Analyst. Surprisingly, the positions in systems engineering make up for more than 306,000 of all the job openings in the past whole year. This makes sense since a Systems Engineer’s Key Responsibility Areas are vast and they have to develop and manage cyber processes through their entire life cycle. They have to, in essence, recognize key potential dangers and navigate through them by putting effective solutions in check. They are involved in end-to-end capabilities. They oversee the engineering, business and management aspects in their entirety. Right from prototype development to real-life application.
Systems Engineers are now touted as the technical backbone of an organisation. They integrate all the cyber solutions and systems.
What do you Need to Become a Systems Engineer?
Well, at least a bachelor’s degree in a technical field for starters. A lot of work experience and some additional crash courses to your name. For example, ITIL, CISSP, CCNA, PMP. The growth potential is tremendous in this field both in terms of depth and width. You can always find your niche after enjoying a couple of years as this professional. You can then eventually advance into roles in cybercrime and IT audits.
It is always a good idea, to begin with, a well-rounded cybersecurity personnel development program. No wonder it is one of the cybersecurity jobs in demand.
Cybersecurity Manager
The job title says it all. These are the very foundation and basis of security against cyber crimes: especially to help combat hackers and unauthorised access. A day in the life of a cybersecurity administrator entails maintaining all security system operations, tracing and correcting security solutions, updating software and maintaining a daily audit, and holding cybersecurity training module sessions for other employees. Essentially, the protection of the network system of the entire organisation rests on their shoulders.
Therefore, typically, this is a very advanced level job. A lot of different technical roles can lead to this position but you need a significant amount of on-hand experience. You need to have a superior understanding of cybersecurity threats and troubleshooting. Along with rest management, you also need to have advanced project management skills. As one of the cybersecurity jobs in demand, this can be a very lucrative career option.
Cybersecurity Consultant
These are the real cyber cops. Their entire role involves protecting the systems against hackers and cybercriminals. They have to provide strategies to build stronger walls around the entire IT infrastructure and implement the latest security solutions.
The job role of a Cybersecurity Consultant is unique because they are not on the monthly payroll. They are ‘consultants’ who work with various organisations in a similar capacity. This is more suited for mid-sized firms who need to up their security measures every once in a while without having to have somebody in-house exclusively. Probably the best way for them to avoid large-scale data breaches without any big recurrent costs.
Like many careers in cybersecurity, you only need a bachelor’s degree in a technical field. What matters is work experience and certifications in this space. Entry-level positions in this space are very few. This is a niche that most people get drawn into after 6-7 years of working.
Cybersecurity Analyst
This job role is a natural winner in the most in-demand cybersecurity jobs in demand list. The Cybersecurity Analyst role requires observing and preventing cyberattacks on an organisation’s network and IT systems. Like we mentioned in the beginning, the increase in remote work has given the largest playground for cybercriminals to play on. Before an attack takes place, these analysts put preventive measures in place after analysing the kind of attack that is most likely to take place. They identify cyber weaknesses specific to each organisation and apply security stitches. They also train all vendors and employees to help them follow the rules.
This is more on the preventive front. On the cure front, Cybersecurity Analysts aid in business continuity and disaster recovery. Companies who have already been attacked will therefore know exactly how to recover. With more sophisticated attacks on the daily, these analysts become the front liners in defence control.
A study by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the need for Cybersecurity Analysts is expected to grow 31 per cent year on year till 2029. To put that into perspective, it is almost 5 times more than the global average for any other job role in general.
That number should tell you a lot about why this space is the space to be in the next decade at least. If you are in a similar technical field, this is where you should be headed. And you and I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for data and data scraping services!
