Cybersecurity is an exciting domain that offers significant financial rewards to candidates looking to make a career in this field. However, as online threats evolve in nature and complexity, cybersecurity professionals must continually enhance their skills to remain competitive in the market.

With a widespread increase in the frequency of cyberattacks (7% increase in Q1-2023 alone) and organizations experiencing an average of 1200 cyber attacks in a week, the demand for cybersecurity experts has phenomenally increased in the last few years. Another piece of statistics expects the growth in the demand for these cyber professionals to be a staggering 35% between 2021 and 2031.

To this end, this post will examine the essential cyber security skills to have in 2024 and how enrolling in top institutes such as IEEE BLP’s cybersecurity courses can help you gain these skills faster.

Cyber Security Overview

Cybersecurity refers to the practice of safeguarding networks, systems, data, and programs from online or digital attacks. The main objective of cybersecurity is to prevent unauthorized access to data, devices, and services and protect them against malicious cyber attacks such as theft, damage, and disruption.

Put simply, cybersecurity is the field of study that focuses primarily on methods and strategies for preventing computer systems and networks from stealing data, leaking information, and misdirecting the services they offer.

These malicious cyberattacks usually aim to access, alter, or destroy confidential or private information, interrupt regular business processes, or conduct money fraud.

Top Cybersecurity Skills to Have in 2025

Cybersecurity professionals must have the right mix of technical and interpersonal skills to keep an organization’s digital assets safe and sound.

Here are some of the key technical skills required for cybersecurity in 2025:

1. Networking and System Administration

Irrespective of the type of business, their foundation is based on the kind of network infrastructure and the systems it supports. However, cybercriminals who are capable of compromising these foundations can create havoc for networks and systems, leading to severe security breaches.

This makes the profile of a network and system administrator very important in safeguarding these assets. Network security skills are basic skills for cyber security. Gaining these skills means a deeper understanding of important routing protocols such as TCP/IP and OSI, along with staying updated on the latest cyber threats.

Learning networking and system administration also helps you understand the various technical aspects of data transmission and ways to keep it safe and secure.

2. Operating Systems and Virtual Machines

Operating systems and virtual machines in any organization are other common area that cyberattackers target to gain unauthorized access to systems.

Strong knowledge, expertise, and cyber security skills in these areas help the professional safeguard systems within the organization and serve as the foundation of cybersecurity. To gain these skills, it is recommended to start learning more about common operating systems, virtual machines, and other similar systems.

Apart from this, it also makes sense to learn about critical command-line apps such as Linux’s Terminal, which includes various applications for malware identification, online forensics, penetration assessment, and more.

3. Network Security Control

Since several cybersecurity attacks take place across a network of connected devices, it can lead to a range of security vulnerabilities. To keep your organization secure, you’ll need to develop a thorough understanding of wired and wireless networks and how to secure them.

Network security control is the process of safeguarding an organization’s data and network from malicious intent or intrusions/online threats. This requires proper firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) in place to protect an organization’s data as effectively as possible.

As a cyber security expert, you also need to know how to utilize a firewall for monitoring and blocking any kind of fraudulent network activity. Additionally, as a security expert, you should have cyber security skills like familiarity with VPNs, remote tracking, and other intrusion online security systems.

4. Coding

The objective of different programming languages used in the cybersecurity domain or coding is to safeguard data, networks, information, and systems against cyber attackers and bad actors with malicious intent who try to allegedly gain access to operating systems.

Here are some of these languages that are considered essential skills required for cyber security:

• Python: It is a well-known programming language gaining rapid popularity among cyber professionals as they can use it to detect and fix various security vulnerabilities.
• JavaScript: Learning JavaScript helps you combat various cross-site and malicious cyber attacks.
• C and C++: They are important low-level coding languages.
• HTML: HTML is a programming language that several websites can use and is ideal for beginners as well.
• SQL: This is another popular programming language intruders use to alter stored information and prevent harmful SQL injection attacks.

5. Cloud Security

With more companies choosing to move data to the cloud, cloud cyber security skills are needed more than ever to protect their data. Companies need experts who can handle cloud security services effectively.

Several companies are now thus looking for cybersecurity professionals with skills that apply to the public and hybrid cloud platforms.

Additionally, companies are looking for cloud infrastructure specialists to help them store data and run applications. This includes the seamless implementation of various policies and technologies that protect cloud-based systems and devices.

6. Blockchain Security

Blockchain is an ever-evolving technology that will be the foundation of various security systems in the future. These include mobile and IoT devices, network control, supply chain integration, and identity solutions.

Gaining blockchain cyber security skills offers unprecedented data security to your system, as attackers often try to destroy the entire data stored on computers in the global network to destroy or corrupt a blockchain.

This kind of blockchain security results in a lower risk of getting attacked by online hackers due to the complexity needed to enter and penetrate such a network.

7. The Internet of Things (IoT)

Knowledge of IoT is related to the security of internet-connected networks and devices.

For security professionals, it is important to have an understanding of this area because today, a large number of IoT devices prioritize security, which is important for the sustainable functioning of the entire web ecosystem.

This makes it one of the most important cybersecurity skills. By learning this cybersecurity skill, you can adequately tackle privacy and other security challenges in IoT.

Additional Cybersecurity Skills

Apart from the skills required for cyber security mentioned above, here are some of the other important skills:

a. Risk Analysis

A risk analyst is responsible for examining problems with systems and networks to prevent them. They consider the various possibilities of cyber issues, identify potential risks, and estimate the chances of their occurrence.

This is why risk analysis is a critical skill to have for cybersecurity professionals because it allows them to assess the impact of potential security breaches thoroughly. Additionally, a risk analyst can develop various strategies for preventing and responding to them.

To acquire risk analysis skills, Cybersecurity professionals can take specialized courses in risk management or cyber security studies.

b. Analytics and Intelligence

Today, analytics and intelligence are essential for advancements in various fields and technologies, thus, this skill set has become mandatory for cybersecurity professionals.

A professional with cyber security skills in analytics and intelligence is equipped to tactfully mitigate the risk of harmful and malicious cyberattacks by utilizing application data. Analytics and intelligence can go a long way toward identifying and detecting malicious cyberattacks.

c. Identity and Access Management

A large number of security breaches today are caused by weak or compromised passwords. Therefore, it is important for companies to have security professionals who can clearly explain the threats to people and teach them how to improve their password practices.

Apart from this, companies also need professionals on board who can seamlessly manage identity and access management tools, know how to set different network privileges and manage them in the best possible ways so the organization stays vigilant against cyber intruders.

Cybersecurity experts in this area must be sufficiently equipped to define levels of access to specific data sets and set privileges customized to employee roles and responsibilities.

d. Mobile Device Management

It is another must-have cyber security skill for a security professional. This is because a cybersecurity expert needs to constantly work in collaboration with the IT department to ensure the safety and seamless distribution of mobile devices, including smartphones, laptops, and tablets.

e. Digital Forensics

To be proficient in cyber security, a practitioner in this field must have knowledge of various investigative techniques and other forensic tools utilized for detecting data, various anomalies, and any malicious activities across the files, networks, and other aspects of the enterprise.

In Conclusion

Gaining key cyber security skills is imperative in today’s digital world. To establish yourself in the field of cyber security, it is best to enroll in top cyber security courses offered by leading institutions such as IEEE.

These courses provide hands-on training in various areas of cybersecurity, including incident response, threat detection, and ethical hacking. These courses are specially designed to equip professionals with the necessary skills and expertise to protect organizations from constantly evolving cyber threats effectively.

By committing to enhancing and expanding these cybersecurity skills, professionals can contribute significantly to the security of digital infrastructures, thus making a tangible impact in their fight against cybercrime.

Learn more about cybersecurity courses and acquire the relevant skills in the domain.

FAQs

What skills are needed in cyber security?

As a cybersecurity specialist, you need to have skills in areas such as firewalls to filter and prevent unauthorized access to the network, intrusion detection systems, virtual Private Networks (VPNs), network and administration, and remote access.

What are the seven types of cyber security?

The seven types of cybersecurity are Network Security, Cloud security, Mobile security, Endpoint security, Application security, IoT security, and zero-trust.

What are the five areas of cybersecurity?

The five main areas of cybersecurity are data security, application security, cloud security, endpoint security, and identity and access management.

What is cyber security 5 points?

Cybersecurity in 5 points can be summed up as

• Identify
• Protect
• Detect
• Respond
• Recover