Cyber Threat Analyst: Key Job Skills and Expected Salary
A Cyber threat analyst is an information security professional who leverages skills and expertise of network engineering to mitigate and avoid cyberattacks on the organization or its employees. They identify vulnerabilities and conduct digital forensics and threat modeling to monitor and tackle threats against organizational infrastructure.
In this article, we explain the role of a cyber threat analyst, key job skills needed to succeed and expected salary.
Table of Contents
- Who Is a Cyber Threat Analyst: Role Definition
- Expected Salary Scales
- Top 10 Must-Have Skills for a Successful Career as Cyber Threat Analyst
Who Is a Cyber Threat Analyst: Role Definition
A Cyber threat analyst is an information security professional who leverages skills and expertise of network engineering to mitigate and avoid cyberattacks on the organization or its employees.
Cyber threat analysts apply analytical skills and technical expertise to defend against threats posed by cyber actors. They keep a constant tab on threats and consistently monitor networks to identify any security breaches or possible vulnerabilities.
Cyber threat analysts, also known as Cyber intelligence analysts, play a vital role in keeping the enterprise’s sensitive and proprietary information secure. They work across departments and functions to identify and correct flaws in an organization’s security systems, programs, and solutions; and recommend specific measures to improve the overall security posture of an organization.
Before we get into the details of what you need to build a great career as a cyber threat analyst, let’s revisit exactly what a cyber threat is, the different types of threats that cybersecurity pros need to protect against, and their common work responsibilities.
According to a study by Burning Glass, cybersecurity job postings have grown by 94% in the past six years and account for over 13% of all IT jobs.
Typical Duties of a Cyber Threat Analyst
Cyber threat or Information security analysts perform the following duties:
- Continually monitor the network of an enterprise for any security breach and investigate in case any violation occurs
- Install and use software like data encryption programs and firewalls to protect sensitive information
- Perform penetration testing by simulating attacks to identify any vulnerabilities in the systems before they can be exploited
- Develop reports documenting security breaches that have occurred and the extent of damage caused by those breaches
- Craft security standards and best practices for a company
- Keep up to date with the latest IT security trends
- Work with the security team to develop digital security policies and implement them
- Provide recommendations on security enhancements to senior management
- Make decisions and evaluate the best tools for any given security issue
- Monitoring and audit of system and processes like identity and access management which may involve methodologies like zero trust security
- Help in delivering cybersecurity awareness training
Expected Salary Scales
On average, cybersecurity jobs openings take 20% longer to fill than typical information technology roles. The smaller labor pool and lack of abundant talent in the market have resulted in higher salaries for these jobs, and that makes them a lucrative career choice.
Let’s quickly take a look at some of the stats around income in this field:
- The average entry-level cyber threat analyst salary in the United States typically revolves around $84,000 per year
- With more years of experience, you can expect to earn between $98,885 to $126, 976
These salary ranges may vary widely, as it all depends upon numerous variables such as education, certifications, years of experience and any additional skills. Some firms even offer bonuses and profit-sharing for mission-critical security tasks. Like in any industry, the best performers who build a formidable reputation are outliers as far as salary scales are concerned.
Learn More: Top 10 In-Demand Cybersecurity Jobs in the Age of Coronavirus
Top 10 Must-Have Skills for a Successful Career as Cyber Threat Analyst
With the evolution of technology, there is also a rise in network vulnerabilities and the number of cyberattacks. As both technologies and digital access continue to develop at a rapid pace, it’s essential for a cybersecurity expert to keep up with the latest skills and knowledge in the world that’s assailed by amazingly innovative new cyber threats every day. This ability to learn on the go, and be flexible and agile when it comes to evolving with space is a central skill for a cyber threat professional.
To succeed in the role of security threat analyst and grow in the field of cyber security, here’s a list of top 10 must-have skills you will need:
Key Skills for a Successful Career as Cyber Threat Analyst
1. Formal Education in a Related Field
Some of the best cyber threat intelligence analysts may have taken unconventional paths in their careers, but eventually they tend to acquire a degree in the field of information assurance or computer science. They also can opt to acquire several IT certifications directly related to security.
A formal education provides a solid foundation to threat pros, no matter how they came to acquire the skills to perform their job in the field of cybersecurity and information technology.
Even if you already have an undergraduate degree in another field, you can still become a threat analyst by getting the required certifications/ degrees. What has worked for several professionals similarly situated is to go for an online master’s degree program in information assurance, offered by over 50 universities in the United States, and lists can be found in sources such as Universities.com and US News.
2. Ability to Dig Deep and Focus on the Details
Cyber threat analysts are almost like digital detectives, and any good detective will tell you the devil lies in the details! Successful cybersecurity pros have skills such as:
- An analytical bent of mind and strong diagnostic skills
- High adaptability to new work environments and fast-changing business landscapes
- Keenness to deep dive into the technical aspects and examine them thoroughly
- Keeping one step ahead of common web vulnerabilities
- Knowledge and awareness of contemporary practices, standards, methods, and procedures
Learn More: What Is Cyber Threat? Definition, Types, Hunting, Best Practices, and Examples
3. Technical Know-How
As the field of cybersecurity underpins various sub-disciplines, it’s a bit tricky to identify which technical skills a cyber threat pro must possess exactly. You will find that most job profiles share a common technical foundation.
For starters, one needs a basic understanding of the administration, management, and architecture of operating systems such as Linux, UNIX, Windows, etc. along with networking and virtualization software.
A command over firewalls and network load balancers is also crucial, apart from the general concepts of software development, programming, and analytics skills.
A cybersecurity analyst must have a basic understanding of the common programming language like C, C++, Java, assembly language, disassemblers, and scripting languages (Perl, Python, Shell, or PHP).
Many companies also demand certifications as a prerequisite for employment. A recent survey conducted by the International Information System Security Consortium noted that certifications and degrees were often a major factor in hiring. Though cybersecurity certifications add weightage; however, they should never alone be the only reference.
Some of the important cybersecurity certifications that you can opt for include:
- OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional)
- CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker)
- GCIH (GIAC Certified Incident Handler)
- CISA (Certified Information Security Auditor)
- CISSP-ISSEP (Information Systems Security Engineering Professional)
- CISSP-ISSAP (Information Systems Security Architecture Professional)
- CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
- CISSP-ISSMP ((Information Systems Security Management Professional)
While certifications are great to have and show potential employers that the candidate has a learning mindset, they must be backed by solid industry experience to get the right skill-set with experience. This is all the more important in the cybersecurity field since the threat landscape will most likely look very different and evolve almost unrecognizable between when a degree or certification is achieved and the time of applying for a job.
4. Familiarity with Various Tools, Methodologies and Platforms
A successful threat analyst must be aware of various tools, including threat intelligence tools, report writing tools, threat modeling tools and methodologies, malware analysis tools, statistical data analysis tools and threat sharing platforms.
Professionals should have the ability to collect data from Indicators of Compromise (IoC) — critical forensic evidence of intrusions on networks. The data collection can be done both from internal as well as external resources. Cyber threat hunting is also an emerging area of skills, where the security professional employs a proactive approach to cybersecurity to help stop attacks before they get too deep or even occur. Cyber hunting combines innovative technology, proactive methodology, and in-depth threat intelligence to identify and stop the more hard- to- detect malicious activities and is a much-in-demand marker of subject matter expertise.
Apart from that, they must also be competent with using visual link analysis tools that enable analysts to see multilevel links among various threat entities, actors and IT infrastructure. Some of the major link analysis tools that pros leverage for data visualization include Sentinel Visualizer, i2 Analyst’s Notebook, Maltego, and more.
If you have never used a visual link analysis tool before, you can easily learn it from any free open source platform like Gephi or Social Network Visualizer.
Learn More: What Is Advanced Persistent Threat? Definition, Lifecycle, Identification, and Management Best Practices
5. Good Communication Skills
You must learn to converse in simple English (or any business language that applies in your context) to communicate complicated subjects to people who may not have a technical background. A successful cyber threat intelligence analyst must be able to present their findings and ideas in well-written and clearly articulated reports. In most companies, at least one editor is available to help in writing such reports but the process is greatly helped if the threat pro has the skills to write clear and concise prose themselves.
To improve your writing skills, there are plenty of resources available online, but you can definitely follow the guidebook on The Elements of Style by William Strunk and EB White.
You must also possess great oral communication skills as you will have to communicate with management, colleagues, and also possibly give presentations to current and prospective customers as you progress in your career.
To improve your public speaking, leadership, and communication skills, consider joining a local Toastmasters Club, a global non-profit organization that helps develop public speaking skills for all individuals.
To climb to more advanced positions on the cybersecurity career ladder, you must also master the following:
- Clearly articulate complex concepts both verbally and in writing
- Ability, usage, and understanding of active listening skills
- Excellent communications and presentation skills
- People management skills
We cite people management skills because of the need to explain to colleagues the concept of ‘social engineering’ – a pervasive issue within the security community. Even with all the software and hardware security measures in place, hackers can – and do – still use social engineering to convince unsuspecting people to share their credentials, passwords, and access to an otherwise secure system.
6. Strong Implementation Skills
To protect your organization from various types of cyber threats, you must have a holistic view of your company’s security set up which includes specifications, threat modeling, testing, implementation, and vulnerability assessment.
The threat professional should also have a basic understanding and implementation of security issues that are associated with operating systems, virtualization software, and networking. They need to study the systems and network architecture, then utilize that information to identify the security controls in place and their usage. They must also be familiar with weaknesses in app deployment and databases.
The junior cyber threat expert can use their coding skills to automate some security tasks. Based on the organization’s technology stack, you may often have a stack of pre-built tools available which can be used to automate many functions and tasks in the security domain.
7. Subject Matter Expertise and Foreign Language Skills
To become a top-notch threat analyst, you may need to become a subject matter expert or SME in a specific geography. By gaining expertise in a particular region, you will improve the quality of your threat reports. You must stay abreast of the current geopolitical issues that pertain to your region of expertise to add context to your assessments and recommendations.
An ability to read a foreign language, in your area of expertise will enable you to understand the publications in their original language. Learning any foreign language such as Russian, Arabic, Korean, Farsi, etc. often comes in handy.
Being an expert in a foreign language you can gain deeper insight into the regional attitudes about geopolitical issues, to complement western news sources, as often these threats originate from foreign countries even as the crime is perpetrated in the virtual world.
Learn More: What Is Unified Threat Management (UTM)? Definition, Best Practices, and Top UTM Tools for 2021
8. Ability to conduct detailed assessments and provide strategic recommendations:
Senior cyber threat pros must organize and coordinate technical vulnerability assessments, which include
- Systems and network vulnerability assessments
- Web application assessments
- Physical security assessments
- Social engineering assessments
- Wireless security assessments
- Penetration testing
- Implementing secure infrastructure solutions
They provide recommendations and set the technical direction to manage security incidents and ensure the integrity of the resulting approach and process. In addition, they may need to explain complex incidents to members of the C-suite and even show forensically how an attack was concluded.
9. Data expertise
Besides being proficient in data collection skills, threat-intel analysts must also have great data analysis skills and techniques. They should be familiar with different methods to acquire and study data to drive insights that help perform their work.
Data collection sources typically include:
- Search engines (Threat Crowd, Google Hacking Database)
- Website footprinting
- Web services
- DNS interrogation
- Cyber counterintelligence (CCI) techniques
- Automated OSINT tools
Analysis of Zoho Reports, IBM X-force Exchange and AlienVault OTX, can help threat intelligence experts perform competitive threat analysis. These powerful tools can also be utilized to build custom IoCs, threat intelligence sharing and data collection.
Developing vast knowledge in various data collection operations drives efficiency and results in better response time and faster threat resolution.
10. Must Understand the Hacker Mindset
To reduce the risk of external hacking attacks, it’s necessary to understand the hacker mindset. Even the world’s major brands such as Facebook and Microsoft have hired hackers because who can know a hacker better than a hacker themself?
To think like a hacker, you must know the traits of a competent and sophisticated hacker. Hackers tend to be intelligent, highly skilled, and enjoy taking risks. They typically have a background in computer science and have exceptional social and communication skills and even an understanding of human psychology, that empowers them to manipulate people and get them to release essential information or perform critical actions.
With offensive cybersecurity gaining traction, it’s useful to anticipate and prepare an attack plan for any contingency, instead of doing damage control afterward. This is where penetration testing can help. Kali Linux is a great platform that you can master to perform proactive penetration testing.
Learn More: 7 Cybersecurity Companies Fighting COVID-19 Themed Cyber Threats
Closing Thoughts
There are innumerable reasons to pursue a career as a threat analyst. Across the board, these roles offer good pay packages, job security, tremendous growth and learning opportunities, exciting day-to-day tasks and a chance to make a real difference.
As a cybersecurity professional you may get exciting opportunities to conduct detailed analysis to identify, assess, monitor, and counter threats posed by malicious cyber actors to your company’s critical infrastructure and information systems. Along with conducting such strategic assessments and offering tactical advice for securing operations, you need to apply your technical and scientific know-how to solve complex cyber intelligence problems.
Cybersecurity will continue to expand as the world becomes more digitally connected. IoT (Internet of Things) and cloud computing will be responsible for a rise in security threats, so the need for skills to combat these issues will also grow.
What other skills do you think are needed for a successful career in cybersecurity? Share your responses on our LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter!
