The Power of Soft Skills in Cybersecurity Jobs
What do you think about when you hear the term "cybersecurity"? Probably a significant amount of technical expertise, right? Firewalls, coding, encryption, and even that mysterious hacker in his hoodie. While these may be some aspects of working within cybersecurity (especially working in a hoodie), there's an entirely different side to cybersecurity, very important but vastly overlooked. These skills, once mastered and enhanced, can definitely make you a more well-rounded cybersecurity practitioner.
We're talking about soft skills. While there are plenty of important soft skills in general, these are among the most helpful to someone striving to succeed in cybersecurity.
While often overlooked, they can be the secret sauce for success in this domain. Let's look into why these skills matter so much in cybersecurity roles.
Communication
Communication is the real deal. Being able to communicate complex technical concepts in simple terms a layperson can understand is going to be vital when you're talking about security issues with executives and non-technical clients.
Not only is verbal communication important, but similarly, clear writing is a must. You're drafting reports, emails, or even security guidelines—in all of these, your writing will need to be on point in order to get the correct information across in a way that's succinct and easy to digest.
And finally, listening. Listening means really paying attention to feedback from others, allowing you to quickly understand problems and get to the root of issues quickly.
A real-world cybersecurity scenario where communication was key
Seb Hague, SBT's Director of Content, shares a time when communication skills were vital for him:
During a ransomware engagement with a public sector client, I had to explain the attacker's lateral movement techniques to their legal team whom had no technical background. I used simple analogies and visuals to walk them through how access had been gained and what it meant for their data. Later, the same team referenced that briefing when updating their internal risk protocols. Listening to their concerns and adapting the language to their perspective made all the difference.
Teamwork
Being part of a cybersecurity team can be similar to being part of a sports or gaming team. You have to be able to help one another to defend from various types of threats. If you are sharing knowledge and complementing each other's skills, you'll become a robust and effective team.
But let’s be real, sometimes, team members can have disagreements and things can get tense (especially in high-pressure situations). Here is where the real teamwork comes into play. Being able to handle disagreements calmly and work together to find solutions may be difficult at times, but it's crucial in order to succeed within high-performing teams.
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving in cybersecurity is like a high-stakes competitive game. You need to analyze the task and break down big problems into smaller, more manageable goals, allowing you to find the best strategy to tackle the problem. Analytical and critical thinking will help you to figure out the main issue and tackle it effectively, look at information carefully and make smart decisions based on what you find, and solve problems efficiently.
Since cyber threats keep evolving, creative problem-solving lies at the very core of outmanoeuvring them. This kind of agile, analytical thinking will let you engage outside the box to come up with new and better ways of safeguarding systems against cyber threats.
Incident response triage means rapidly assessing and prioritizing security incidents to determine the appropriate level of response, and is just one example of how problem-solving (and many of the other soft skills mentioned in this blog!) play a pivotal role within cybersecurity.
Time Management
Time management is a skill many struggle with (procrastination is always so tempting). However, managing your time properly is an important soft skill in any role, not just cybersecurity. Knowing how long different tasks will take allows you to manage your time accordingly, and create an effective schedule.
Working efficiently means completing tasks promptly without sacrificing quality. Managing your time and working efficiently is a soft skill that makes a huge difference, especially in cybersecurity where you're often juggling many urgent priorities at once.
Adaptability
The world of cybersecurity changes fast. Being flexible and willing to try new technologies will help you stay up to date with this ever-changing landscape.
Learning quickly is another key skill. The field of cybersecurity is always evolving, and you’ve got to keep up to date with all the changes happening in the industry. This is where being passionate comes in extremely handy, as it will make doing research, taking cybersecurity courses, and staying on top of your continuing professional development exciting.
Resilience is also important. Things don’t always go as planned, and being able to bounce back quickly from setbacks while staying calm under pressure is a must. Sometimes you just need to adapt on the fly, staying cool, calm and collected while learning new strategies to deal with the challenges that arise.
Seb adds:
We've all had awful unstructured data in an IR case, or struggled to pull data back from an environment for analysis. The ability to roll with the punches and have the technical know-how to adapt on a case-by-case basis is absolutely critical. I remember one engagement where the client's logs were in a format our tooling couldn't parse, and we had just hours to triage. I quickly taught myself enough about their logging structure and scripted a workaround to extract useful data in time. That flexibility allowed us to continue the investigation without delay, and the client later adopted my parsing logic across their environment.
Leadership
When moving to more senior positions in cybersecurity, leadership skills become more beneficial. Good leadership has different facets, but part of it is setting a good example and encouraging your team to do their best.
Decision-making is another important part of leadership. Leaders need to make quick, well-thought-out decisions with the information they have. This helps the team move forward and be more agile. As the leader of a technical team, it's important not to get disconnected from the work your people are doing on the frontlines, which is why training that combines hands-on and strategic skills is important.
Attention to Detail
Attention to detail ensures the work is done correctly. A small miss in cybersecurity can lead to a big disaster. In this respect, everything will have to be done as precisely and accurately as possible. This mitigates risk and increases the reliability of any measures taken to enhance security.
Interpersonal Skills
Similar to good communication, having strong interpersonal skills is extremely useful within cybersecurity.
Positive relationships foster trust and collaboration. This helps when it comes building a professional network within the industry which, in turn, provides support and opportunities for growth.
Emotional Intelligence
Another key skill in cybersecurity is emotional intelligence. This means the ability to understand and manage your emotions in positive ways to communicate effectively, defuse conflict, and empathize with those around you. All of which will create strong working relationships with both your team and/or clients.
Most experienced incident responders will have worked with customers who were overwhelmed, frustrated and sometimes even embarrassed about the state of their security posture. Approaching that situation with empathy, rather than judgement, helps calm emotions, rebuild trust and move forward making improvements without 'laying the blame'. Emotional intelligence is key in any role, especially in reactive, high-pressure incidents.
Ethical Judgment and Integrity
Cybersecurity is a field that requires discretion, maintaining confidentiality, and protecting data. For this reason, having integrity and a strong sense of ethics, is so important. Showing that you are responsible, and displaying these attributes will build others' trust in you as well.
Conclusion
In summary, technical skills and practical training are very important in cybersecurity, but it's soft skills that will make the difference between being good and being great. They'll help you articulate yourself effectively, strengthen working relationships, resolve problems, and adapt to change.
These soft skills benefit both you and your team. Technical skills may be the focus most of the time, but soft skills make a huge difference not just at work, but in life.
