Thursday, March 28, 2024

The perks of being a cyber security professional in the Information Age

A lot of people dream of working in their desired organizations like Google, Microsoft, Apple and other Fortune 500 companies. But to get into these organizations is not an easy task because you need to start at a smaller level to get to this point. However, as cyber security becomes an emerging priority among top organisations, you will get to work in these companies at an early stage in your career. The perks of working in cyber security are more than one can imagine. From an awesome pay to a super awesome work life, you can basically think of cybersecurity as the king of all tech careers. There is no way that the world is ever going to stop needing these professionals. Whether it is the fact that digital threats will always exist in our world or the fact that machines can never replace humans completely for security; either way, cybersecurity professionals are going to reap the benefits. However, it is sad that the world will have to take a worse shape for these professionals to become more demanded and respected. Ideally, no one would want a world where threats are rampant and where we need a steady supply of talented information security professionals, but this is not an ideal world and we cannot stop criminals from doing what they do. What we can do is teach more students the art and science of cybersecurity, focus on making our courses (like the ethical hacking course, among many others) more at par with the current standards and make sure that students are encouraged to take up this field as a serious career choice.

Coming back to the perks, the job stability and job security is so lucrative in this field that many people who had been out of a job during the coronavirus pandemic switched to cybersecurity and signed up for a CEH (one of the top IT certificate course right now) because it was one of the very few information technology jobs to rise in demand rather than fall, during economic distress all over the world. Why is that, you might wonder. Well, for one thing, the world went extremely digital to overcome its social distancing restrictions and you know what that means. More digital population and more digital use, means more gains for hackers. Did you know that hackers did not even spare the World Health Organisation during the COVID-19 pandemic? The other reason why hackers were riding the COVID-19 wave was that during times of widespread fear and anxiety, people become more vulnerable as internet users and end up making more mistakes and trusting more fake information than usual. There were cases of a shockingly high number of fake websites, emails, and apps that were claiming to be sources of genuine information regarding the coronavirus, but were actually nothing more than impostors who would end up stealing your information, siphoning your data and infecting your devices.

Last but not the least, one of the major perks of this career is its accessibility and ease to learn. A few decades ago, it wasn’t possible for anyone to become a cybersecurity professional if they didn’t have enough technical background. But today, the tables have truly turned. With the advent of online learning platforms and the internet’s popularity, the ease of imparting quality education to even remote areas of the world has become a reality. Not just that, but anyone can learn cybersecurity on their own using the internet as their medium of learning. For all this, we surely owe our thanks to the digital technology itself that has progressed significantly in the recent years. And we all know what that means. The more our technology progresses, the more we will need cybersecurity.