7 Steps to Building a Successful Career in Information Security

The number of information security jobs is continuing to grow as businesses scramble to hire skilled professionals to protect their data. Some researchers predict there could be over 3 million such jobs available by 2021.With this kind of demand, matched by sizable paychecks, it’s no wonder more and more people are considering it as a career option.

In this article we discuss the steps you should take to start and build a successful career in information security.

You can enter the field from school, college, from another tech discipline or, with enough planning, persistence and personal development, from an unrelated discipline. But before you start the journey, you need to make sure it’s a good fit. You’ll need passion to make a success of it, so don’t just follow the paycheck.

While there isn’t a formula, common character traits of successful information security practitioners include being analytical, persistent, curious and perceptive. They like solving problems and have an engineering mindset: they revel in details, want to know how things work and enjoy the challenge of fixing them when they break.

Soft skills become more important as your career develops. But because threats and breaches often impact different areas of an organization, you must be a good communicator – able to talk in business not just technical language – and an active and positive team player.

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You’ll also need to work out-of-hours on self-development, since the threat landscape and response tools change so often that it’s difficult to commit enough time during the workday to keep on top of the latest information.

The days of the “security expert,” who knows about everything, are over. The focus is now on niche specialists. These days, you can specialize in areas such as web application security, forensics, compliance/risk management, auditing, network security and (Read more...)