A Long and Prosperous Career
Throughout your cybersecurity career, you will spend a lot of time in the world of identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Sometimes, the skills required for the job can range from the mundane, such as running a phishing campaign, to some nail-biting, all-nighters of remediation (after someone ignored your carefully crafted phishing campaign and clicked on a malicious link).
Your skills were not easily acquired. Perhaps you derived these skills from tinkering with machinery, dumpster-diving, and everything in between. Information security research has transitioned to more sophisticated tools and methods. The entire security profession has been elevated to new levels that require more than just technical know-how. In some cases, a person is required to possess a certification, such as a CISSP credential, in order to get a particular job. The CISSP credential shows that a person is not only a dedicated information security professional, it also indicates some expertise in managerial skills, such as policy development, regulatory compliance, and risk management.
Who Needs Soft Skills?
Many of the skills required in a corporate environment are classified as soft skills. Soft skills are a discipline unto themselves. When we examine the work of social engineers, we witness mastery of soft skills. But rather than just using these skills to elicit a desired response, soft skills are important for every day interactions, and are vital in many professional situations. The soft skills required to be an effective information security professional are more important than ever. One of these skills that immediately comes to mind is the advisory capacity that an information security professional will encounter. This is particularly true of a person who possesses the CISSP credential.
For many years, information security professionals have longed for “a seat at the table” in executive meetings. Thanks to certifications, such as the CISSP designation, the field of information security has been given legitimacy in organizational decision-making.
Many Hats and Many Roles
To discover more about CISSP read our whitepaper, 9 Traits You Need to Succeed as a Cybersecurity Leader.