What are the most common skills for cybersecurity professionals?

Having a strong technical foundation is critical for security professionals. Understanding networking and operating systems will help when learning or implementing higher level security technologies. For example, how can you use nmap to its fullest if you don't understand the basics of TCP/IP such as the differences between TCP and UDP, and the TCP 3-way handshake?

In cybersecurity, essential skills include technical proficiency with a strong understanding of networking, operating systems, and coding. Critical thinking is crucial for analyzing and solving complex problems, while effective communication skills help convey security issues to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Continuous learning is a must to stay updated on the latest threats and technologies. Lastly, attention to detail is essential, as small oversights can lead to significant vulnerabilities. This is because cybersecurity is a holistic approach that combines technology, processes, and people. We must keep learning, stay curious, and foster a cybersecurity mindset.

cybersecurity professionals should become familiarized with blockchain and how it handles security issues. As a cybersecurity expert, you must know about Intrusion detection systems, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and remote access. AI is perfect for the cybersecurity sector, as it brings reliability and consistency to cybersecurity measures, as it helps security professionals identify suspicious activity and impart a greater understanding of the cyber environment.

One thing that realy helped me was to break in poorly secured virtual machines (you can find some on vulnhub for example). Log the traffic using wireshark and try to understand how the machines comunicate with each other. Try to get a deep understanding how metasploit and recon-ng works. And create your own Systems and try to break in. E.g. it is realy helpful to create a backend without using prepared statements to get an understanding how sql-injection works and how to avoid it.

Analysis of what could happen, the causes, the effects, the limiting possibilities for this. Play the devil's advocate: all need analytical skills to see possible angles to the problem. The pitfall is to think only from the own side: view all also from the outsides (all angles, therefor plural). A script kiddie and a state actor have different approaches and possibilities: do not forget one or underestimate the cleverness of the neighbor's little boy.

You will need to find simple concepts and ideas to explain the complexity of your project. If you see that some people don't get it; hire someone or ask for help urgently. Investors, coworkers and media, needs to be helped... To help you back.

Communication is crucial: one of the main skills is to be able to connect to the people who hire you and are potential marks for a hacker/criminal. Getting clearly and in understandable language the right insights across and next the ways to behave and work. This applies to solo and team efforts. TRANSLATE: use clear language, simple enough day by day examples with alternative solutions for the DON'Ts. Just technical solutions without being carried by the people results in bad work: money and time spent without the needed results.

The security mindset is to first look as a defender: which 'doors and windows' of known types are wide open. Secondly: think like a burglar/hacker: which are the easy ways in and which the hard ways in. See with the eyes of the attacker: that makes a burglar a good advisor for prevention (provided he gave up his old profession!). Try to find all open gates & windows & doors and close them. Next find all easy to open ones. Next the hard to open ones, next nearly impossible. And next the impossible and have a look what is needed to make it possible. After these switch to monitoring and logging: how to detect an intrusion, also through ways you did not expect at first. Next compartmentalize: limit overall access, divide it up, limit impact.

A cybersecurity professional should possess strong and professional hacking skills. In summary, they should have adequate security skills.