While new year resolutions are nothing new, the desire to pivot into a brand new life or exciting new purpose is particularly pronounced for the new year of 2021. After all, many of us have had to navigate through uncharted waters during 2020 that has left us desiring a fresh start.
If you’re an IT professional, then you’ve got a cutting-edge advantage because cybersecurity is an extraordinary silver lining waiting for you in 2021. In this article, you’ll discover the vast range of cybersecurity career opportunities that are open to you and how you can upskill to meet this demand.
Exciting New Horizons for IT Professionals in 2021
Cybersecurity is a dynamic industry with plenty of application areas in virtually every industry segment. A career in cybersecurity can lead you down numerous exciting paths: leadership or operational roles, public or commercial sectors, as a consultant or instructor, working with current products and services or developing ones, researching new technologies for social good, or creating innovations for national security, and many more.
When you upskill in cybersecurity, you can accelerate your career by getting an in-house promotion to securing a position in a new company or even venturing out with your own business or service.
There is no better time than right now to become a cybersecurity professional. Since 2020 sparked a massive spike in remote working, online learning, and e-commerce, there is even a greater need—as well as awareness—for cybersecurity professionals to protect businesses and individuals from the devastating consequences of security breaches.
Furthermore, it’s been projected that there will actually be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, a number that has more than tripled from the one million unfilled positions in 2014. That’s 3.5 million opportunities up for grabs for anyone who has the right skills in cybersecurity!
A Diverse & Dynamic Field
The technology divide is narrowing and becoming accessible to the mass with improving technology. With these developments, hackers and cybercriminals are constantly devising new and increasingly sophisticated methods to cause harm and profiteer.
Consequently, the field of cybersecurity has to rapidly evolve and grow to stay ahead of cybercrime in order to secure online safety for everyone. Thus, there is an astonishingly wide range of domains in cybersecurity in which you can become passionate.
These domains include artificial intelligence, network security, endpoint protection, backup and data recovery, application security, mobile security, phishing, and social hacking, machine learning, cryptography, authentication, threat intelligence, automated and adaptive networks, identity and access management, and super-computing.
With such a diverse and expanding list of domains, it can be easy for anyone to feel a little overwhelmed in getting started. Rest assured, because venturing into cybersecurity is much easier than most people think.
How You Could Be More Qualified in Cybersecurity Than You Realise
Leading a successful career in cybersecurity requires two key ingredients; the first being the right mindset. Chances are, simply because you have the interest to read this article, that you are already passionate about IT and curious about the latest technologies—which means you already have the right mindset to succeed!
Having the right mindset, passion, and curiosity is exactly how Paula Januszkiewicz got started in cybersecurity too. At the tender age of 17, Paula’s career began as an IT administrator for a school.
While the job was great, Paula’s curiosity was bigger. She had always been fascinated by several areas of the operating system: extracting data, recovering data, and violating the different types of access lists, to name a few. Her curiosity also meant she was always digging into various news in cybersecurity.
With this passion and curiosity, Paula decided to pursue cybersecurity as a career. This is where she needed the second ingredient: the right knowledge. In order to upskill, Paula read books and trained herself to become knowledgeable in cybersecurity. Today, she is the founder and CEO of CQURE, a service dedicated to helping businesses protect themselves against virtual intruders.
If you can relate to this passion and curiosity for operating systems, technologies, and online security, then you have the grit to enjoy a career in cybersecurity. The next ingredient you need is the right, practical knowledge.
Practical Knowledge as the Key to Success
Numerous renowned specialists, from IT experts to headhunters, agree on the importance of acquiring the right knowledge and training to have a successful career in cybersecurity. Here’s what a few of them have said:
“Study what stimulates your passions. That’s where you will be the happiest, that’s how you find the best work.”
~ Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned security technologist.
“I think they should get the educational background which is key and get the credential. They need to work to separate themselves from just the staff level capabilities and so ultimately good old fashioned hard work, put hours in it, and learning through experience and developing these experiences.”
~ Stanton Chase, Executive Recruiter
What entails the right knowledge? It’s not about a theoretical learning experience. It’s about practical knowledge on what’s out there that you can actually apply in real life. After all, cybersecurity is a practical endeavor.
Learn from Professionals
Therefore, the best way to learn is directly from skilled professionals who have real-world experience fighting hackers on the frontlines of the virtual battlefield. The team at CQURE Consulting are skilled cybersecurity experts who have this experience, with 300 years of collective experience in the IT security field.
The experts at CQURE Consulting have worked on the frontlines of cybersecurity with numerous businesses worldwide. Their penetration tests and combined research show that 84% of systems have backdoors and 59% are hacked from within. They also know how hackers think and have cooperated with international white hacker stars to stay ahead of black hat schemes.
With this level of practical experience, they know the latest and best ways to perform risk assessments of infrastructure and how to defend businesses. Recognizing the need for more cybersecurity experts, Paula created CQURE Academy so the team of experts at CQURE Consulting can share their practical knowledge and train the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Get a Jump-start to Becoming a Windows Security Pro in 30 Days
CQURE Academy’s free 5-day Challenge, “Do Cybersecurity Like a Pro” will give you a taste of their online certification program for cybersecurity newbies, the 30-day Windows Security Crash Course.
Windows Security Crash Course is the fastest and most practical training course for aspiring cybersecurity professionals. Inside the crash course, you’ll get 30 video lessons, exercises, and tools that will boost your career with 30 skills that are up-to-date with the industry’s needs and standards.
Although the program comes with 12-month access so you can complete it at your own pace, it is also possible to crash the course in 30 days. With about 30 minutes of laser focus a day, you can complete all 30 lessons in 30 days. You choose.
Following the 30 skills in 30 days routine, you will get not only the fastest results but also knowledge you can apply immediately in your organization.
What the Students Say
“All of their classes are based on their real-world experiences with the products, not just the typical Official Curriculum style classes that teach you things for an exam, but that you will never use. You’ll find that all the material you’ll learn in the class will be used, at some point, in your security career.”
~ Jack Perry, Security Principal Consultant, Presidio
The world-renown team of experts at CQURE Academy also have experience in teaching, which means they also know how to deliver the practical knowledge you need in the most effective manner.
“I have attended CQURE’s training as someone who is not a security professional, but just an enthusiast, and I feel like I learned A LOT. The whole training was loaded with information and nice demos of the latest technologies. On top of that — having the opportunity to ask and talk to professionals was priceless.”
~ Marek Chmel, SQL Server DBA, AT&T
By the end of the 30-day course, you’ll have the foundation you need to deepen your knowledge in cybersecurity and become a white hacker with the skills to keep people cyber-safe.
You’ll know how to implement application whitelisting, practical cryptography, troubleshooting, forensics, scripting, and automation. Additionally, you will master all the important skills for Windows Security Specialists: Windows Internals, Managing identity and access in Windows Systems, Managing Infrastructure Services, Securing Windows networks, High Availability, and Windows Systems.
