Cybersecurity offers a wealth of opportunities for those looking to change careers or pursue new challenges. As the global cybersecurity workforce gap continues to grow, the need to fill both technical and nontechnical positions will increase, and security skills will remain highly sought after.
According to the 2022 (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study, for example, the number of unfilled security jobs around the world increased to 3.4 million during the past year — up 26 percent. And, according to CyberSeek, there are currently 769,736 cybersecurity job openings in the United States alone.
In this article, we’ll look at top cybersecurity jobs and how to transition into a cybersecurity career.
Opportunities
Despite recent tech layoffs, companies still need tech talent for application and cloud security in 2023, says Dice. “Much of this demand is driven by the simple fact that many workers remain remote and need cloud resources and enterprise-grade apps to perform their jobs — and cloud infrastructures and business apps remain prime targets for attackers.”
“At present, application security engineers and cloud security engineers are among the two most difficult jobs to staff since there is no specific path to become an AppSec or CloudSec professional, as they require knowledge in different domains, a lot of curiosity and independence,” says Shira Shamban in the Dice article.
The most in-demand security job titles, according to CyberSeek, are:
- Cybersecurity analyst
- Software developer
- Penetration and vulnerability tester
- Cybersecurity consultant
- Network engineer
- Cybersecurity manager
- Systems engineer
- Senior software developer
- IT director
CyberSeek, which tracks supply and demand within the US cybersecurity job market, also offers an interactive career pathway that maps key jobs with related skills and credentials. The list includes roles like system administrator and network engineer, because, at some level, every IT job is a security job.
“Every IT worker, every technology worker, is (or should be) involved at some level with protecting and defending apps, data, devices, infrastructure, and people,” notes Steve Morgan.
Transferable Skills
If you work in tech, “you likely already possess many of the skills needed to be successful in cybersecurity professions, says ISACA, and now is a good time to leverage those skills. For example, “understanding networking, database management, industry terminology, communication, coding and how to problem solve” are examples of valuable, transferable skills, ISACA says.
“Professionals with strong security backgrounds and development skills are needed to purposefully automate the security of cloud-native applications,” says Davis McCarthy in the Dice article. “Organizations do seem to be looking for more cybersecurity professionals with experience in developing and securing cloud-native technologies — more so than in the last few years.”
DevOps, DevSecOps, and SRE skills are also highly valued because of their emphasis on understanding processes and “big picture” analysis. “It’s as much or more about thinking creatively and logically about vulnerabilities in a system than it is about being able to put yourself in the mindset of an attacker,” says Masha Sedova at The New Stack.
Looking for a job?
Check out the latest job listings at Open Source JobHub.
Learn More
Comments