Cybersecurity careers have recently blown up in popularity. Even smaller companies have decided to make the right call to invest in securing their precious data. From moving to cloud computing, backing up storage, educating the employees, and hiring trained professionals, these firms take various steps to prevent data breaches and corruption. Although some of these steps are fundamental enough, expert guidance is required with more complex threats such as hackers and ransomware. It is important that companies focus on eliminating these problems by penetration testing, sniffing out loopholes, and engineering different solutions. In order to do so, they need to recruit professionals with experience in the field.
Hiring committees look for valuable certifications in the resume of the candidate to see whether they are capable of doing the job they need help with. Accreditations have changed the way employers select different job profiles. However, in order to get the right certification, candidates not only need to be skilled, but they also have to pass different qualifying criteria, examinations, and interviews. They might even have to sign up for training programs to get the necessary experience. While many programs cater to industry beginners, some are designed to inculcate the skills essential for leadership roles. The qualifications for such programs need a vast amount of work experience from the candidate.
QUALIFYING CRITERIA OF VARIOUS CERTIFICATIONS
Individuals who want to get into ethical hacking do not have taxing eligibility requirements. However, they do need to be acquainted with different hacking tools, sniffing techniques, malware identification, and software cleaning. Certifications such as CEH and CPT demand penetration testers to go through virtual labs and prove their skills at hacking into systems. They also need to solve mission-critical problems and provide detailed reports about the procedures they used.
Exams such as CISSP and CISA demand work experience and proper educational background from the candidates. The basic requirement for any such certification is to pass high school or get a college degree. This allows the individual to apply for the examination which tests the candidate’s knowledge about the field, domain wisdom about different aspects of the job, and practical know-how to solve different issues. They should be able to manage access to different users and provide guidance to the stakeholders regarding the investments they need to make.
Although engineers and security architects have multiple ways to get certified, the most common qualification they need is to get a college or university degree in the field.
They must know how to build systems after getting the insights from testers and analysts regarding the firm’s business and IT system. They also need to understand the ins and outs of different cloud services such as Watson Studio and AWS so they can work on cloud security. It is their job to be updated on the latest technology and security measures to be able to upgrade the firm’s hardware and software.
JOB EXPERIENCE
While it is not necessary to have work experience for every certification, it is an undeniable fact that having practical knowledge in the field is always an added advantage. Working for corporations gives individuals insights about how stakeholders and employers feel about cybersecurity investments. It also helps to get better knowledge regarding what firms want or do not want from their security teams.
Ethical hackers need job environment situations because problems are much more complex than they are in virtual labs. They also get to work with network and system administrators. Collaborating with software architects, they can build valuable security systems for any company. This improves the networking capabilities of the candidate and helps bring profits to the firm.
Speaking of networking, different Cybersecurity certifications such as CISA and CISSP allow their members to be part of different specialized communities. These communities help each member to find solutions to different problems, find better job prospects, and improve employability values. Similarly, certifications such as PMP and CompTIA make room for further applicability in the field since individuals with a combination of such accreditations are versatile enough to take care of critical problems that untrained officials may not have the requisite information or awareness to solve.
