As the world of business gets more and more digitized, the need for cyber security engineers grows by the day. The Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance estimates the cost of cybercrime to be around $45 billion per year. Cyber security engineers work to protect a company from expensive threats.
What Cyber Security Engineers Do
Cyber security analysts help keep organizations safe from a wide range of online threats. They also protect the networking systems that companies depend on. These systems may be simple and kept mostly in-house, but they often involve connecting to an external or wide area network (WAN). Let’s also not forget virtual systems and networks that allow employees to gain access to company data while working remotely. Even though external connections may invite more threats, an element of risk is always there.
Last Updated February 2024
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This is where a cybersecurity professional plays a key role. Much of their job description involves performing assessments and penetration testing to limit and control the risk of cybercriminals penetrating the network. A security professional is also a main element of the overall technology team. Specifically, they use security technology to limit threats, which frees up the IT team to focus on creating secure network solutions instead of tracking down security issues.
Further, a cybersecurity professional is often responsible for engineering trusted systems into secure systems. This usually involves a complete review of a company’s networking systems to transition them from trust-based to trustless. To accomplish this, the engineer performs a full audit, intrusion analysis, and assessment of employees’ individual access rights. On the other hand, if adequate trustless security is already in place, a cybersecurity engineer may focus more on developing and implementing cybersecurity solutions. These may fit the existing security architecture or require new hardware and software to protect from cyber attacks.
How Cyber Security Supports the Modern Business Landscape
The more vital elements of business shift from basic internal networks to cloud computing, the more exposure critical systems have to threats. A cyber security engineer has the skills to limit or eliminate these threats. This way, the company can carry on business without investing extra resources in recovering from attacks. Because they fulfill this crucial role, cyber security engineers are essential to the survival of modern businesses.
When a security engineer has earned the necessary credentials, they can apply their skills to a wide range of businesses. This includes finance, wholesale, retail, education, manufacturing, and more.