Chapter 36. How Many Ingredients Does It Take to Make an Information Security Professional?

Jasmine M. Jackson

What makes a good security professional? Some would say to have security certifications as long as your name. Others would say that you have to be born with it. Neither of these statements are true. There are information security professionals who are high school drop-outs, high school graduates, and college graduates. What do all of these groups have in common? They have specific ingredients to make them great information security professionals. Want to know the ingredients? Well keep reading.

The first ingredient is to have a thirst for knowledge. Many information security professionals take on the quest of learning a subject to become a master in it. This drive or quest will never go away. As their understanding of the subject grows, so does their depth of knowledge.

The second ingredient is finding a niche in information security. The information security field is very broad and vast. Sample subject areas are application security, forensics, and risk and governance. Good information security professionals master one subject and have a breadth of knowledge in other subject areas. This extensive knowledge will allow the information security professional to not be siloed or close-minded in their approach to solving problems.

The third ingredient is passion. There will be days where it seems you’re not making any progress and in some instances feel like you’re going backwards. There will be other times where the subject matter will completely frustrate you to where you will abandon your efforts. When this happens, passion will be the ingredient to draw motivation to continue learning and moving forward.

The fourth ingredient is take risks within reason. There’s a quote, “Nothing grows in the comfort zone.” It’s true. While the comfort zone gives the perception of warm and fuzzies like a nice hot blanket, in reality it’s an anchor around one’s neck that binds you to familiarity and possibly outdated thinking. It’s OK to take risks, as it should be a bit scary/intimidating at first glance. Taking risks is one of the best ways to grow in your career and as a person.

The fifth and final ingredient is learning how to fail fast. In a perfect world, everything works right the first time. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and can only make decisions on our knowledge at the time. Due to blind spots, there will be problems we try to solve where we don’t know all of the information and have to make educated guesses. Sometimes those guesses work but there will be other times where the guesses are totally off. When this happens an information security professional will need to assess why the situation failed and learn from it. Information security is a cyclic process where we acquire knowledge and make adjustments as we see fit. Good information security professionals do not dwell in their mistakes; rather they get invigorated to get it right the next time.

Having the above five ingredients is a start in having a good career in information security. By no means is this list exhaustive. This article shows anyone with a desire to learn about information security can be successful in this field. The professional needs to find an area of information security that interests them and learn as much information as they can.

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