"Why having the right technical skills is important, but it's not enough to be successful in a cybersecurity career.”

Developing soft skills is just as important as developing technical skills, if not more in certain scenarios. Let’s discuss five essential soft skills that every cybersecurity professional should have to succeed in their career.

1. Communication: The ability to effectively communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders, both verbally and in writing, is crucial for cybersecurity professionals. They need to be able to explain complex technical concepts in simple terms, and communicate the risks and impacts of security incidents to management and other stakeholders.
2. Leadership: Cybersecurity professionals often need to lead teams and projects, and the ability to do so effectively is crucial. They need to be able to inspire and motivate their team members, and also be able to delegate tasks and responsibilities effectively.
3. Problem-solving: Cybersecurity professionals are constantly faced with new and evolving security threats, and they need to be able to quickly identify and solve problems. They need to be able to think critically and creatively, and come up with solutions to complex problems.
4. Adaptability: The cybersecurity field is constantly changing, and professionals need to be able to adapt to new technologies, processes, and threats. They need to be able to learn quickly, and be comfortable working in an environment of constant change.
5. Emotional intelligence: Cybersecurity professionals often need to work under stress, and the ability to manage stress and emotions is crucial. They need to be able to stay calm under pressure, and also be able to empathize with others and build strong relationships.

Either you are at the beginning of your career or later part, these soft skills will define your success. Technically problems can be solved as a True and False statement but when it comes to people it is the softer skills which will drive your technical expertise to get the best outcome. There will always conflict of ideas, personalities or focus but the individuals who have mastered the art of problem-solving they will shine above others in such situations.

Within cybersecurity just emotional intelligence would require that you stay calm when "shit is hitting the fan" and with this calmness find the one event which has caused the outage or data breach. I have seen scenarios where the technical folks outside of security panicking if the outage or misconfiguration was done under their name. So leading in such scenarios no doubt requires the knowledge of the subject but more importantly it is the soft skills which will ensure that your team stays focused and tries to get out of the problem first before working out how to ensure it doesn't happen again or why did it go wrong in the first place.

I will finish of with Leadership, Adaptability and Communication with these skills within cybersecurity you can be the go to person for the organisation. You will need to put your self out there and show that you care for security of the organization, I can recall clearly in my early days when I put myself out there by arranging a roadshow for cybersecurity and after these events in a large enterprise individuals from different teams started to approach me for questions they had for security. I became their go to person to help them in a friendly way when they had questions, for some reasons as humans we tend to ask questions when we feel that we won't be judged and in my experience that is easier said than done when someone tells you. So the key trick here to ensure that you are not just doing your work that is assigned to you within Cybersecurity but you become the champion of security. You make sure that you let people know that you are approachable for all things security, so what if you don't have all security answers but why would a HR person have those answers if you don't, so naturally you are best placed to help all your colleagues who may have a burning question either through personal curiosity or due to a project they are working on.

Obviously now you have come this far and maybe wondering what do you do next. Quiet simply put yourself out of your comfort zone and then look back at your self and ask others who worked with you what they liked about you the most and what you could improve. If you don't ask you may never know find out !!!