What Does A Cyber Security Engineer Do? Job Overview

Last Updated on 1 year by Touhid

What does a cyber security engineer do for an organization? Cybersecurity engineers are responsible for developing, implementing, and monitoring a cybersecurity strategy to ensure the security of an organization.  

Every company’s first line of defense is to protect against unauthorized entrance into a system. In this post, we will discuss what is cybersecurity engineer, how to become a cybersecurity engineer, their responsibilities, and career opportunities.

What Is Cybersecurity Engineering?

Before understanding what a cybersecurity engineer does, it is crucial to understand what cybersecurity is. 

Cyber Security or cybersecurity engineering is a process where you need to combine the hardware, software, and security policies to manage them. You need to do so to ensure the security of the network, the hardware systems, and the most crucial one: data. 

A cyber security engineer is an IT (Information Technology) security specialist who analyzes, develops, and implements a secure computer network and ensures the applications are running safely. Cyber security engineers not only know how to protect themselves from cyber security threats, but they also know how to plan and prepare before any security threats take place.

So, the main aim of a cyber security engineer is to protect your system from unauthorized access by developing and implementing a security system.

What Does a Cyber Security Engineer Do? The Responsibilities

A cybersecurity engineer is the person who ensures the security of your system or network in cyberspace. His responsibilities include scratch, design, development, and implementation of highly secure network systems. 

The implemented security systems help to keep the network of individuals or organizations safe from the cyber-attacks of hackers. 

As I mentioned earlier, a cybersecurity engineer collaborates with electrical engineering and computer science. These include hardware, software, network systems, and data. 

A cybersecurity engineer maintains the entire security system or part of it as a team member. To understand the vast responsibilities of a cybersecurity engineer, let’s break down the aspects of his responsibilities in detail. 

Assessment, Identifying, and Secure Vulnerabilities

The main job of a cybersecurity engineer is to identify if there is any weakness in the installed system. If he finds any weakness or possibility of a data breach, he will assess how severe the weakness is. 

The cybersecurity engineer will run a test called “penetration testing” to assess the degree of the vulnerabilities of the system. The tested system includes the computer network, the software that controls the network, and the data management system. 

Developing Security Strategies

After finding the vulnerabilities, the engineer will secure the system with the best possible solution case by developing and implementing one. 

In general, there are 8 basic security strategies to keep in mind for a cybersecurity engineer. They are as follows. 

1. Risk assessment: The engineer must assess the risk of the particular policy that he seeks to develop.
2. Setting the security goal: What to acquire from the strategy, the engineer must set the goal of the strategy. 
3. Evaluating the technology: It includes examining and analyzing the safeguard technology that defines how effective it is going to be.
4. Selecting security framework: This is the standard documented process of the security policy. You can call it the blueprint of the strategy. This helps the organization to manage the cybersecurity risks. 

The cybersecurity engineer will select the best-matched framework for the system required. Some of the best cybersecurity frameworks include ISO 27000 Series, NIST series, COBIT, etc. 

5. Reviewing security policies: The cybersecurity engineer will review the security strategy and whether the security policy designed will serve the purposes effectively. It helps you to define what you want to protect and the final expectation from the strategy. 
6. Make a plan: The security team will create an accurate and applicable risk management plan. The security plan will help to identify, analyze, evaluate, and address the cybersecurity threats of an organization.
7. Implementing the policy: after creating a security plan, it’s time to implement the security plan. In this strategy, the cybersecurity team will implement the security policy to ensure the security of the data and assets of an organization.
8. Evaluation: At the final stage, the team will evaluate the strategy whenever it’s performed to ensure security.

Communicate With Team

One of the key responsibilities of a cybersecurity engineer is to communicate with the team. It is noted that the team is developed or consists of multi-specialists such as security engineer, administrator, operator, network engineers, and manager.

As a security engineer, you should communicate with team members to accomplish the job. This strategy is dedicated to ensuring security and improve the efficiency of the cybersecurity strategy implementations. 

Monitoring Security System

As a cybersecurity engineer, you will continuously monitor the cybersecurity system of your organization. You will look for any data breaches, hacking attempts, phishing attempts, data damage incidents, virus attacks, and many more. 

You will do the monitoring proactively so that any data breaching attempts can’t take place behind your observation. Cyber monitoring helps cybersecurity engineers to defend against any cyber attack and to be on top of evolving threats. 

Employee Training

Employee training is very essential responsibilities of a security engineer. Cyber attackers can get unauthorized access into of an organization because of employees’ knowledge and mistake. As a result, your organization are vulnerable to cyber-attack.

So, if your organization has security engineers, they will train your employees about cyber security and protection tips on how to protect from cyber-attack. And if your organization have no security engineers, you can hire them as par time or pay them as consultancy.

Quick Response to Sudden Incidents

After being so cautious, data breaches can happen. But, an experienced and skilled cybersecurity engineer responds to the incident quickly. The worst case in a single data breach is to open the path of multiple data breaches. 

As a cybersecurity engineer, you must first stop the potential breaches. You have to change the security and access codes. After that, you have to disconnect all devices that are connected into your server room through internet.

Now, you should take help from the cyber forensic experts if you’re not able to find out problem and make a solution.

By the way, backing up data in a safe place and removing unnecessary data from the system is another crucial responsibility of a cybersecurity engineer that helps to ensure immediate security of the cyber system. 

Verdict:

From the discussion above, we can simply categorize the responsibilities of a cybersecurity engineer into 3 tasks. They are as follows:

1. Data breach prevention. 
2. Prevent cyber attacks. 
3. Implementing new security systems

Reporting

What does a cyber security engineer do at last stage? In this stage, the security engineer will prepare a report after day end. They will daily reporting and communication with the relevant departments in the organization. Cyber security engineers also reporting security findings and feedback to management.

Career Opportunity for Cyber Security Engineers

Discussing some stereotype theory won’t make any sense to engrave the importance of cybersecurity. That’s why I am sharing some statistics related to data breaches. 

You will feel the gruesomeness of a breach of cybersecurity and will also feel the necessity of effective cybersecurity steps. 

• • The monetary damage of data breach only in the USA is 30 billion dollars in 2022. It was 6,90 billion dollars in 2012.
  • There are around 41 million data records has compromised in 2023.
  • Around 236.1 million ransomware attacks happened in 2022.
  • And 61% of small businesses were attacked in 2022.

Verdict:

So, you see, the market is big, and the opportunity is simply great. To clear you up about the career opportunity, here I am sharing the annual salary of a cybersecurity engineer. This will help you to make a decision whether you will come to this sector. So, if you want to become a cybersecurity engineer, the career path is vast and long. 

How to Become a Cybersecurity Engineer? Steps You Need to Go Through

If you have decided to become a cybersecurity engineer, you have to go through some precise steps. Here are the steps you have to go through to the realm of being a cybersecurity engineer. 

Bachelor’s Degree

Having a degree isn’t mandatory to become a cybersecurity engineer. But you know what? Having a degree on IT (Information Technology) is always a plus point. So, get your bachelor’s degree in the relevant field. For example, computer science, network communications and network infrastructure, data analysis, system engineering, etc. 

Programming Skill 

To become a cybersecurity engineer; you must gain some precise skill sets. You must hold the following skills. 

• Programming language skills (Python, Java, Javascript, C/C++, Ruby, Golang, PowerShell, Node, SQL, etc.): These are required to write security codes. You can automate multiple tasks with coding. 
• System networking (routing protocols, encryption techniques, DNS, VPN, subnetting, network security technologies like firewall and encryption, etc.): You must know the structure of the network. Because you have to work with the network mostly. 
• Extensive Database platform knowledge (Data structure, Data storing, algorithm, data flow, etc.): Data is the main concern of cybersecurity. So, you must be good at database platforms to understand how data works and how to manage them with foolproof security. 
• Operating system knowledge: All organizations don’t work on a single platform like Windows. So, you must know other operating systems like MacOS and Linux. 
• Cloud computing: You must be familiar with and good at cloud computing. Cloud computing is the future of the digital world, and businesses are moving to cloud computing for reliability. 

Cloud computing requires tools, data, and precise infrastructure for cybersecurity, and you have to know these. 

• Up-to-date Knowledge of the Cybersecurity World: The technology is updating every moment. You have to keep pace with the updated technologies continuously. 

Professional Certificate

Getting a professional cyber security course completion certificate can add value to your quality. And most interestingly, more than 60 percent of cybersecurity jobs require a cybersecurity-related certification. 

Some top cybersecurity-related certifications are as follows. 

• Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
• Certified Ethical Hacker
• CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP+)
• Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Certification
• CompTIA Security+, etc. 

Cybersecurity Internship

Involving with a cybersecurity-related internship is always a great plus point to the path of becoming a cybersecurity engineer. Try to get an internship in a reputable IT security company. You can search for “Where to find cybersecurity internships?” and you will find best cyber security organizations.

Some Soft Skills You Require

Aside from education, certifications, and internship, you need to develop some soft skills. Among the soft skills, networking and communications is the most crucial one. 

• Networking and Communication: Try to enhance your communication skills. Approach persons or organizations confidently. You must explain complicated things in simple ways. Be straight and to the point. 
• Problem-solving and analytical skills: Enhance your problem-solving and analytical skills. Think easy and think positively. Try to find out the simplest way to overcome a problem. 
• Learning capacity: Your learning capacity always pays for you and the company you will be working for. So, keep learning. Try to grab ideas fast. Use any possible learning sources from anywhere else that you can access. 

Final Key Takeaways

At last, what does a cyber security engineer do? A security specialist is a very vital person of an organization and plays an important role for ensure security. Cyber security engineers are responsible for ensure security of computer networks and software application from unauthorized access.