How to make cybersecurity part of your arsenal

Featured article by Calvin Paige, Independent Technology Author

As an IT technician or contractor, your job is to make people’s life easier by fixing and improving their security systems. One easy way to prevent a system from malfunctioning is to improve its cybersecurity. Viruses and hackers can cause computers to run slowly and also be the culprit of large data losses. Having cybersecurity will not only be reassuring to potential customers, but it will also benefit your own personal computer systems.

Get a formal degree

Of course, downloading anti-virus software is an easy way of improving anyone’s cybersecurity. However, customers or clients are unlikely to shell out for a technician that comes round to download an anti-malware package. Therefore it is vital that you get fundamental knowledge of how to implement and maintain a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. If you are currently already working in IT and don’t want to return to full-time education, you can find an online Cybersecurity degree. This will allow you to build on your current IT knowledge and allow you to keep working at your usual schedule.

Get the necessary experience

Even if you already have an IT-related degree, you will need to gain some experience in cybersecurity itself. Often, many employers ask for at least two years of experience of incident detection and response. This proves that you can not only spot a cybersecurity risk, but you can also deal with the problem at hand. While two years may seem like a long time to build up experience, you have to think of it from their perspective: trusting an individual with their network security means not only trusting that their money is well-spent, but also that their data and valuable information will be safe.

Offer it as part of your service

Once you have the educational backing, it’s important to start offering this knowledge to customers and clients. Offering it as part of your IT package will also enable you to start building up experience on the job. Even just establishing yourself in one institution as the go-to person for cybersecurity could be hugely beneficial to your employment future. Before you go listing it on your resume, consider a few approaches:

– Be specific: what’s your specialism in? Are you a knowledgeable hacker who can test the effectiveness of security systems, or are you better at implementing a strategy? Cybersecurity is an incredibly broad church, and it’s likely that your customers will know that.

– What are your strengths, and what can you realistically offer customers? You cannot blur the lines around your expertise – being clear about what you can actually offer customers will make you far more reliable and trustworthy.

Adding cybersecurity is a wise step for any computer engineer. Whether it’s just an extra string to your bow or specialism, this is a valuable set of skills and knowledge to have. It’s important to always be clear about what your skills are and what your qualifications are; cybersecurity doesn’t simply have one meaning, and as a business professional, it is down to you to explain where you exist.