This week, October 18-23, is Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week! At CyberSN, we’re using this week to help open up the conversation around the broken career and hiring system within the cybersecurity industry. A huge part of improving cybersecurity hiring and bringing attention to cyber careers is making sure that professionals in the industry, and those who are looking to join it, have access to comprehensive, easy-to-use career planning tools.Planning your career path
However, the industry is relatively new and constantly evolving, so planning a cybersecurity career path can be a challenge The increase in frequency and complexity of cyber threats has forced cybersecurity organizations to change their business offerings and their teams regularly. Consequently, many jobs, such as DevSecOps and Cloud Security roles, simply did not exist ten years ago, so we have little data about common next career moves.
There is also very little common language used across roles and job descriptions in cybersecurity. Organizations often use vague titles that merge several roles, either because the detail of what’s needed for the role is unclear, or, faced with a severe talent shortage, they’re looking for one person to cover multiple roles. The industry also suffers from a lack of succession planning, insufficient budgets, and overtaxed teams due to its tight labor market; cybersecurity job postings now account for 20% of IT job postings, up 18% from 2020.
A lack of career planning resources means that many highly-specialized cybersecurity professionals have no information about careers they can pivot to, what training they need to progress, and how they can navigate career transitions or hybrid roles.
CyberSN enables all cybersecurity professionals to plan their career path efficiently and easily in our Career Center. At CyberSN, we address the lack of language standardization with our exclusive Job Taxonomy of 45 defined cybersecurity roles. All 45 roles are featured in our Career Center, mapped into a variety of career paths by our team of cyber and recruitment experts. For example, a Security Analyst can move on to become a Cloud Security Engineer, who can then pursue a Cybersecurity Project Manager role.
Cloud Security Engineer Career Path
Our Career Center also specifies the average salary to expect from each role and how this salary will increase, enabling cyber professionals to truly know their worth and plan their salary negotiation points. CyberSN identifies the best certifications and training courses to pursue for each role, providing the clarification that cyber staff need to embark on new pursuits and feel comfortable at work.
Only by developing a clear cyber career plan can professionals figure out the areas of expertise they’re lacking in, the experience they require, and their eventual career and life goals.
This year’s NIST Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week is calling attention to the contributions to society that cybersecurity professionals make, and the innovations they produce. The three goals of Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week align closely with our own: to inspire, engage, and inform society on cybersecurity careers, to demystify cybersecurity careers, and to develop a highly skilled and diverse workforce.
We’re encouraging everyone to participate in Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week and the CyberSN team are here to help with any mentoring opportunities, certification guidance, DEI support, or career planning.
You can visit the NIST website for more information on getting involved in Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week, or get in touch with CyberSN for more information on our cybersecurity career resources.
Visit our Career Center and explore the career pathing tool for yourself.
