The risk of financial and reputation damage caused by a data breach has led to greater demand for security engineers, and a growing skills gap. However, with a growing skills gap comes greater opportunity for a fulfilling and lucrative career as a security engineer.

So the question is what security engineer is and what skills are required to be one?

A typical responsibility for a security engineer includes installing and maintaining hardware and software (firewalls, antivirus, and intrusion detection) to reduce security risks within an organization.

The security engineer role is about building and maintaining IT security solutions that help organizations to stay protected against cyber threats. This differs from a security analyst, who is concerned with organizational awareness, policy and governance risk management.

Skills and Qualification:

To become a security engineer, in term of qualification, an employee should have a bachelor’s degree in a technical subject. Such as: computer science, cyber security, mathematics, engineering or science.

While experience in network security is beneficial, and certification with industry standard technologies like Juniper, Blue Coat, Checkpoint, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco IOS or Sophos Enterprise Portal would be a bonus. There is also a range of internationally recognized certifications from organizations such as: CEH, CISSP and (ISC).

Tips:

A tip to become security engineer is to start learning new skills straight away. Watch YouTube videos, subscribe to security blogs and keep up-to-date on recent hacks in the news.

Remember, you don’t need a Masters in Cyber Security or ten years experience to become security engineer. An enthusiastic attitude and understanding of the main industry challenges can take you a long way.

Moreover, you can also learn different practical based security courses to gain some practical knowledge, a security engineer requires both practical and theoretical backgrounds of security measure that are used to secure organization and it’s information system.