
According to cybersecurity ventures, there will be around 3.5 million available job openings globally for cybersecurity by 2021. If you want to jump into this highly competitive field, you need to be well-prepared beforehand.
Hence, you need to be aware of all the skills that you need at your fingertips to become a CISO.
Compared to other cybersecurity positions, CISO requires much more expertise in security details, information technology, and the vision of the company. Let’s take a look into some of the most important hard and soft skills required to become a CISO.
Risk Management
Since IT security is not self-contained within the company itself, a CISO needs a complete understanding of data flow in the organization. It involves learning about its involvement with third-party vendors, remote works, partners, and other related applications.
As a result, a CISO needs to identify data breaches among the various sectors of a company. Then, they need to lay down concrete security plans to avoid future security threats.
They are responsible for conducting regular audits, preparing reports on breaches, and finding innovative ways to prevent theft, data loss, and threats.
Compliance Management
Just like risk management, a CISO has to dabble in compliance management as well. As mentioned previously, organizations are not self-limited. As such, the duty to ensure that all the departments are following regulations befalls on a CISO.
Therefore, a CISO has to be well-aware of all the standards, regulations, compliance demands, and government requirements needed to be met by an organization.
Besides this, CISOs have to focus on changing regulations like PCI and FINRA, making sure that the company’s policies are compliant with the rules.
IT Expertise
Instead of taking part in the daily execution of security plans, CISO has to look after various IT fields, hold meetings with technical experts, and carry out regular scans for data vulnerability.
As a result, CISO is required to have a long list of technical expertise in various skills. Some of them have been listed below.
- Developing secure infrastructure
- Managing remote devices and workers
- Handling recovery plans
- Creating a team and plan for crisis management
- Securing applications and vulnerable database
- Managing database regularly
- Enhance firewall and network security
- Manage identity thefts
Communication Skills
Apart from learning hard skills, a CISO must be well-versed with soft skills for leadership quality. Since a CISO is the top-position in the cybersecurity chain of command, they have to be excellent at communication to work well with executive teams and security personnel working under them.
Therefore, they need to have a good grip on analytical thinking and interpersonal skills to guide and train professionals.
With the amount of responsibility that a CISO has, they need to develop excellent communication skills. It will allow them to interact with technical teams, operational sectors, fellow employees, shareholders, investors, third-party vendors, and partners.
Strong yet efficient communication skills can be the key to becoming a successful CISO of any organization.