It’s not often that you hear of a ransomware attack that has caused data breaches or a devastating impact on businesses M&A process and individuals from all industries. Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and attack everything from credit card data to personal health records.

The job of a cybersecurity professional is to protect against these attacks by analyzing vulnerabilities and taking preventative measures. To accomplish this, they need certain abilities, both non-technical as well as technical.

To keep up with the latest hacking techniques, it’s crucial for a cybersecurity expert to be aware of various platforms and computer systems. This includes forensic investigation programming languages, as well as specific tools (e.g. tools used for digital forensics or penetration testing). A cybersecurity analyst, for instance is required to know how IoT devices are connected to the Internet and can be hacked.

It’s also important for cybersecurity experts to be competent in identifying, assessing and prioritize risks for their business. It’s difficult to defend yourself against every threat since hackers have an almost endless number of ways to cause trouble. For example security professionals should be aware that passwords should long, complicated and comprise a mix of lower and uppercase letters, numbers as well as symbols. Also, that passwords should not contain personal data such as birthdays or a family member’s name.

For a successful cybersecurity expert, it’s important to have empathy for both the victims of cyberattacks as well as those committing it. This allows them to see what a cyber-hacker might be thinking. They can then put together more effective defenses.