“Learn from the past to predict the future.”

A very famous quote which means you cannot predict the future if you don’t understand the past. So, it becomes very important to learn from the past incidents happened worldwide to understand the need and future of Cyber Security.

Some incidents from the past created a lot of chaos and led to an increase in the significance of cyber security in day-to-day life and IT Industry which includes:

  • A shutdown of 150 power plants in the USA and Canada in August 2003. It was one of the biggest blackouts in history. No electricity for 48 hours. Life became still. 50 million people were affected and a total $6 Billion damage was reported.
  • Large commercial websites of companies like Yahoo, FIFA, Amazon, Dell, eBay, and CNN were taken down with the help of DoS Attack by a 15-year old kid popularly known as Mafia Boy which caused a huge loss to companies’ reputation along with $1.2 Billion.
  • 12 May 2017, The WannaCry ransomware attack began which infected more than 230,000 computers in just 1 day over 150 countries. After the mitigation of this ransomware, Petya and Bad Rabbit have become the new headache of IT professionals.

Governments, companies, individuals, political & military assets face persistent threats, fraud, extortion, and defacing of critical IT infrastructure every single day and it is going to increase at an even larger scale with an increase in technology. The only solution to deal with all these is “Cyber Security professionals”.

According to Cisco, every year we need 400,000 Cyber Security Expert in India. Cyber Security is one of the highest paying industry right now. But 90% of seats are left vacant every year due to lack of skill and training in this domain.

NASSCOM reported that despite having the largest IT talent pool in the world, India simply lacks skilled cyber security professionals. In fact, the need for experienced professionals is so high that companies are willing to pay a premium salary of over Rs. 1.5 to 4 crores to top talent.

One of the reasons for this lack of talent is that we are following the same rat-race every year running after conventional domains of engineering. It is high time to switch in the field of Cyber Security since it is one of the highest paying industry today.

Top 5 Jobs in Cyber Security?

The jobs that are seeing a sharp increase in pay include the following five cyber security roles:

  1. Network Security Engineer:

A Network Security Engineer ensures the security systems are implemented within the organization to counter and stop threats. Their main responsibilities include maintaining systems, identifying vulnerabilities, and improving automation. They also oversee the maintenance of firewalls, routers, switches, various network monitoring tools and VPNs (virtual private networks).

The salary of a Network Security Engineer ranges from Rs 4 lakhs to 8 lakhs per annum.

  1. Cyber Security Analyst:

A Cyber Security Analyst detects and prevents cyber threats to an organization. This person performs vulnerability testing, risk analyses, and security assessments and helps in planning, implementing and upgrading security measures and control.

The salary of a Cyber Security Analyst ranges from Rs. 6 Lakhs to Rs. 30 Lakhs per annum.

  1. Penetration Tester:

A Penetration Tester performs security tests on web applications, networks and computer systems using an offensive security approach to uncover security loopholes.

The salary of Penetration Tester ranges from Rs. 10 Lakhs to Rs. 50 Lakhs per annum.

  1. Information Security Analyst:

An Information Security Analyst is responsible to maintain confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an organization’s critical data. This person establishes protocols to protect digital files and information systems from unauthorized access, modification, and destruction.

The salary of Information Security Analyst ranges from Rs. 6 Lakhs to Rs. 30 Lakhs per annum.

  1. Chief Information Security Officer:

A Chief Information Security Officer is a five-star general of an IT security department and its staff. CISO appoints and guide a team of IT security experts and help them to design and maintain best practices to handle data breaches and disasters.

The salary of a Chief Information Security Officer ranges from Rs. 20 Lakhs to Rs. 5 crores per annum.

Those are the top five cyber security jobs in India today, but plenty of other roles exist and go unfilled, including Incident Handler, Malware Analyst, Application Security Engineer, Information Risk Auditors, Firewall Administrator, and Vulnerability Assessors.