How To Become A Cybersecurity Consultant

For an organization to ensure all-around protection of its networks and digital assets, the cyber security consulting services expertise of a cybersecurity consultant is paramount. Becoming a cybersecurity consultant, however, takes extensive time and work.

This article details the paths you can take to build a consultancy career in cybersecurity. We also explore cybersecurity consultant salary averages and growth projections for these professionals, along with how to find cybersecurity consultant jobs.

What Is a Cybersecurity Consultant?
Cybersecurity consultants protect their clients’ networks and digital assets. They do so through security evaluations, risk assessments, the development of security policies and prompt responses to cyberattacks.

These cybersecurity professionals may also be called information security consultants, network security consultants or database security consultants. They serve a wide array of clients in the finance, telecoms, healthcare, e-commerce, government and manufacturing sectors.

Cybersecurity consultants may work in-house. However, some prefer working with clients through security consulting firms or on a freelance basis.

Most cybersecurity consultants are generalists because their role cuts across multiple aspects of cyberdefense. However, day-to-day responsibilities may vary depending on the security situation.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll place the roles of cybersecurity consultants into three categories: prevention, detection and response.

Prevention: Cybersecurity consultants who specialize in prevention focus on keeping unauthorized individuals from accessing an organization’s networks and systems. Tasks in this category include:

Studying and applying the latest authentication protocols
Performing vulnerability testing
Drawing up new security protocols aimed at tightening the organization’s cyberdefense
Configuring access rules to the firewall

Detection: Cybersecurity consultants who work in this category seek to discover and understand vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure. These professionals focus on:

Establishing a threat analysis schedule
Interviewing staff to ascertain the root of security breaches
Presenting test findings to the client via whitepapers and technical reports
Response: This category hones in on recognizing and reacting to cyberattacks. A consultant’s incident response plan involves:

Analyzing breaches
Advising in-house security teams on the best defense strategies
Supervising the implementation of solutions