Cybersecurity attacks are becoming more sophisticated with each passing day. Combine that with complex business and enterprise security environments as well as strict regulations, standards, and compliance and you can easily see why your cybersecurity team is always struggling. To add insult to the injury, there is a shortage of talented individuals who can fill cybersecurity jobs.
As cybersecurity continues to evolve, new job roles will be created, and businesses will find it tough to find the right candidates who can fill in those spots. Even if businesses somehow succeed in finding the right candidate, they will have to pay a hefty salary to hire them as these cybersecurity experts are rare. As a result, your cybersecurity team might be understaffed. Dealing with challenges that I mentioned at the beginning of this article with an understaffed team is not possible.
So, what’s the solution? Harness the power of automation to automate mundane tasks such as monitoring so that your cybersecurity team can focus on important things. Invest in training programs and increase the cybersecurity awareness of your employees. Make cybersecurity a shared responsibility so that every employee plays their role. This will reduce the burden off the shoulders of your cybersecurity team. Hone the skills of your IT team so they can deal with emerging cybersecurity challenges.
In this article, you will learn about six unique qualities that every successful cybersecurity team has and your team should too.
1. Problem-Solving
Have you ever solved a jigsaw puzzle in your childhood? If yes, then you are the right fit for the cybersecurity team. Just like in a jigsaw puzzle, you will have to look at dozens of disparate pieces at once and find ways to integrate them. Jason Kent, who is a hacker in residence at Sequence Security said, “Most good hackers want to solve problems, so critical thinking gives one an advantage, especially if facing a challenge they’ve never faced before,” Working in cybersecurity industry means that you will be up against new challenges every day and if you can deal with them efficiently, you can succeed. If you have the passion and drive to solve the puzzle, you can make a career in cybersecurity.
2. Communication
Even though most people might see the technical side of cybersecurity, they ignore the human side of it. Joseph Carson, chief security scientist at Thycotic eluded to it by saying, “Cybersecurity is not just a technical challenge. It is a human one.” You will have to talk to humans when collecting evidence about cybersecurity attacks. Whether you are performing incident response or investigating a threat actor, you will have to listen to and communicate with people who are impacted by the cyber-attack. Make them understand the dangers and educate them. All this won’t be possible if you lack communication skills.
3. Curiosity
With hackers always staying one step ahead of cybersecurity professionals, cybersecurity experts should always stay curious. Many industry experts believe curiosity as the most important characteristic a person should have to succeed in the cybersecurity industry. Whether you are finding a vulnerability in your cybersecurity systems or trying to understand how things work, you should always be curious.
This trait is what forces cybersecurity professionals to conduct different experiments such as clicking on a malicious link, hitting the download button on attachment sent to you via email, writing a malicious script or unexpected string to see what happens. This approach helps them identify security loopholes that are hidden from cybersecurity professionals who lack this important trait.
4. Practice
If you think that you can become a cybersecurity expert overnight, then this is not going to happen. You will have to learn new skills, technologies, and tools and continue to hone your skills to the point where you achieve mastery status. Allan from shared assessment defines the trait as the “practice of continuous learning.” Always stay in the learning mode and test your knowledge. This will help you identify your weaknesses and strengths so you can overcome your weaknesses and build upon your strengths.
5. See Things from Multiple Perspectives
In cybersecurity and threat intelligence, most issues are not simple and surface level. You will have to dig deeper to find them. For that, you will have to conduct an in-depth analysis from multiple perspectives. By seeing things from different angles, you get a holistic picture.
Hackers can have different motivations and always find new ways to take advantage of vulnerabilities into your network, databases, or dedicated servers. If cybersecurity professionals continue to see things from a single point of view, they will never be able to catch those cybercriminals. That is why it is important to form a team consists of people coming from different backgrounds as it can give you diverse perspectives, which can be really useful in combating complex cybersecurity attacks.
6. Be Empathetic
As mentioned before, cybersecurity also has a human side to it. That is why it is important for cybersecurity experts to listen to and try to understand the problems users are facing. The better you understand the impact cyberattack is having on users, the better strategy you can develop to mitigate the risk. Just listening to user problems is not enough, especially if you don’t take measures to solve these problems. Show empathy towards the users and even towards the employees. Educate them so they can protect themselves from cybersecurity attacks. Focus on increasing awareness and invest in training programs.
Conclusion
Working in the cybersecurity industry is becoming more of a challenge especially if you are not equipped with the right skillset. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and hackers always find a way to infiltrate your network, cybersecurity teams will have to up their game. Improve your problem-solving skills and start seeing things from a different perspective. Be curious and show empathy with the users. Focus on developing a better understanding of the users and use communication skills to educate your users.
Which of these traits does your cybersecurity team have? Let us know in the comments section below.
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