7 Skills Employers Are Looking For When Hiring Cybersecurity Professionals In 2024

Talent and skills are scarce in the cybersecurity industry. There are 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions currently available in the market but not enough qualified cybersecurity professionals to fill in those positions. Even if businesses manage to find the right candidates, they bump up against another problem which is skill shortage. In fact, more than half (57%) of companies are experiencing skill shortage.

The rising number of cybersecurity attacks will widen this gap between supply and demand as the enterprises need more cybersecurity professionals. How will cybersecurity hiring evolve in 2024? What skills employers are looking for when hiring cybersecurity talent in 2024? That is exactly what we are going to discuss in this article.

In this article, you will learn about seven valuable skills employers are looking for when hiring cybersecurity professionals in 2024.

7 Skills Employers Are Looking For When Hiring Cybersecurity Professionals In 2024
1. Communication and Critical Thinking Skills
2. Intrusion and Threat Prevention
3. Risk Identification and Management
4. Information Security
5. Security Operations
6. Scripting and Programming Languages
7. Threat Analysis

Here are seven skills employers are looking for when hiring cybersecurity professionals in 2024.

1. Communication and Critical Thinking Skills

The focus is slowly but surely shifting from hard skills to soft skills in cybersecurity hiring. Hiring managers are giving more importance to communication, critical thinking, problem solving and adaptability and are putting less emphasis on technical skills and knowledge. As cybersecurity becomes an integral part of organizations, a cybersecurity professional must possess all these skills alongside knowledge about threats.

We have also seen candidates from other domains enter cybersecurity thanks to these soft skills. Even if you don’t have a degree in computer science or information systems, you can still make it if you are good at these soft skills. This is a huge departure from the rigid approach hiring managers had when it comes to hiring cybersecurity professionals in the past. This has also forced cybersecurity professionals to polish up these soft skills to stay competitive and relevant in the rapidly evolving cybersecurity industry.

2. Intrusion and Threat Prevention

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Prevention is better than cure. You might have heard this adage countless times but did you know that it actually holds true when it comes to cybersecurity. More and more businesses are now looking to prevent threats and intrusions from occurring in the first place instead of dealing with them. Mitigating the risk is much more complex and can cost much more than preventing risk.

This means that cybersecurity professionals with exceptional intrusion prevention and threat prevention will be in high demand in 2024. If you know how you can bolster the cybersecurity defenses to ensure that malicious actors or traffic could not penetrate it, you can charge top dollars for it as it will be one of the most in demand skills for cybersecurity professionals in 2024.

3. Risk Identification and Management

What if the threat actor manages to bypass your cybersecurity defenses despite all your efforts to protect it? That is where cybersecurity professionals who possess risk identification and management capabilities come into the game. If you know how to minimize the damage after a cybersecurity attack and keep the business up and running, you can charge a premium for it in 2024.

With cyber attackers becoming smarter and using sophisticated techniques to bypass traditional security systems, businesses will look to hire cybersecurity professionals with keen risk identification skills and smart risk management portfolio.

4. Information Security

As enterprise attack surface continues to expand, cyberattackers have more targets to hit. This makes the job of cybersecurity professionals much more difficult. The number of devices, data sources and application programming interfaces makes it easier for threat actors to steal your data. How can businesses keep their data safe from hackers? This is one of the biggest questions bothering businesses these days.

Candidates that specialize in information security can help you answer this question. Information security professionals can help you secure not only your endpoints but also your network. Not only that, they can also protect your data center from natural disasters and hardware failure, which could lead to loss of sensitive business data.

5. Security Operations

Security operations centers play a crucial role in keeping your business data safe. They use smart threat intelligence and incident response techniques to identify and respond to threats. These skills are valuable for organizations as cybersecurity attacks will continue to rise. Security operations professionals can also help you with security solution implementation and compliance. They can also monitor security communications and keep a close eye on system status. Moreover, they can also assist in keeping everything up and running just like a DDoS protection service during a DDoS attack.

6. Scripting and Programming Languages

With enterprises heavily relying on software, solutions and applications, it is important for cybersecurity professionals to learn and master programming and scripting language. Without these skills, they will not be able to understand the code and find vulnerabilities in the code.

Cybercrimminals can take advantage of this and inject malware or malicious code into the code. Knowing scripting and programming language can not only help with vulnerability detection but can also allow cybersecurity professionals to write scripts for testing and security purposes.

7. Threat Analysis

With attackers using sneaky tactics and tools to fly under the radar, cybersecurity teams need threat analysts who can catch them. They should have a deeper understanding of the techniques of attackers use and the tools they use. They should pay attention to detail and understand the root cause of the incident.

With a deeper understanding of attack vectors and threat methodologies cybercriminals are using, you can easily detect and define the attack and can also submit a threat intelligence report. This will help organizations visualize the threat and look at it from a whole new perspective. This enables them to create strategies to prevent such attacks in the future.

Did this article help you in understanding which skills employers will value more when hiring cybersecurity professionals in 2024? Share your feedback with us in the comments section below.

7 Skills Employers Are Looking For When Hiring Cybersecurity Professionals In 2024

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