Cybersecurity Skills and Tools: What You Need for Success in the Field

With massive breaches of sensitive data in the news daily, the cybersecurity profession has entered the public spotlight as never before. Career opportunities remain plentiful, with demand far outstripping supply. What are the critical skills that an aspiring cyberwarrior needs for success? And what are some of the most common tools used in the field?

“From a beginner’s perspective, learning the Kali Linux operating system is something that can have a great impact,” says Dr. William Butler, chair of the cybersecurity program at Capitol. “This is a variant of Linux that was designed for penetration testing. It comes with a menu of pre-installed tools, such as Nmap and Nessus, which are designed to detect network vulnerabilities. Bachelor’s in cybersecurity students here at Capitol use many of these tools during their introductory courses.”

Students are then introduced to other tools such as Wireshark, which allows them to capture and analyze packets in order to determine what data is in them, and what sorts of commands they might contain, he said.

Cybersecurity students also learn to use forensic tools – the same tools used by police investigators or the FBI to solve cyber crime and criminal cases – in order to examine code hidden on a computer’s hard drive or in memory. Capitol courses and labs include experience with the Encase forensic toolkit, regarded by many as the gold standard in the field, as well as Oxygen forensic software and Cellebrite data extraction and analysis tools.

All these tools help cybersecurity pros retrieve valuable data, but the process doesn’t end there. Data must also be analyzed. Teaching students to do that is a vital component of cybersecurity education.

A solid background in computer programming is an asset for anyone aiming to enter this exciting, high-demand field, Butler said. “You’re dealing with enormous quantities of data. To have the ability to organize that data, analyze it, and draw conclusions, you need a scripting language such as Java or Python. Programming languages such as C are also in high demand.”