Security Engineers: Crucial Protectors of Cyber Threats
With data breaches and sophisticated cyber attacks continually on the rise, the role of Security Engineer in cyberspace has never been more crucial. Security engineers act as soldiers on the frontlines in the battle to secure sensitive data and critical infrastructure against malicious hacking and infiltration.
So what does the critical role of security engineer entail and what skills elevate security engineers to an elite status on corporate and government cybersecurity teams?
What Makes Security Engineers Tick? Core Skillsets and Traits
You may have heard the terms network, systems, and security administrator thrown around in overly general usage, but security engineers are highly specialized with focus specifically on defense. Core security engineer skills span the following areas:
Deep Technical Security Skills Security engineers wield an arsenal of technical knowledge in domains like cloud/on-prem infrastructure, networking, operating systems, and cyberdefense tooling to detect intrusions, encrypt data, establish access controls, and mitigate threats.
Certifications like Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Comptia Security+, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) establish key competence.
Investigation and Analysis Ability
Security engineers get to the root of each threat or compromise event they detect or are alerted to. Meticulous investigation, digital forensics, incident response, and threat analysis skills allow them to swiftly understand sources of attacks, impacts, and remediation required.
Foundational Software and Coding Capabilities
With organizations increasingly built around software, security engineers are now coders too. They use scripting and programming skills to automate key security tasks, analyze data, customize cyber tools, exploit vulnerabilities in safe test environments, run simulations, and more.
Defense System Architecture and Engineering Security engineers design comprehensive network topologies, server and system hardening configurations, threat intelligence capabilities, access policies, and other architecture to build resilient multi-layer cyberdefenses tailored to each organization’s risks.
Relentless Lifelong Learning With constantly changing cyber threat landscapes security engineers commit to continual learning around new attack vectors, hacking techniques, cyber tools/weapons, and emerging technologies. Curiosity, passion for security disciplines, and intellectual rigor drive this self-study.
Why Security Engineers Have Never Been More In Demand
With attacks growing in volume and sophistication, all organizations prioritize security. A 2022 ESG survey found 81% of organizations plan to hire more cybersecurity personnel. ISACA predicts there will be a global shortage of over 2.72 million cybersecurity professionals by 2028, with security engineers included in most high priority roles.
Security engineers earn lucrative salaries with US Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a median pay of $103,590 annually. Professionals with security clearances, specialized skills in cloud, malware analysis, incident response or other subspecialties can earn well into six figures as individual contributors.
If protecting the cyber frontlines against malicious state-sponsored, activist or criminal hackers motivates you, look into exciting and critical security engineer roles safeguarding our data-driven world.