Making a career in cybersecurity is one of the finest career decisions you can make as of now, provided the industry is growing at an astounding rate, and plenty of cybersecurity job opportunities are available in this domain.
According to Thales Data Breach Report 2024, around 49% of organizations surveyed admitted to being breached and 31% of them were because of human errors. This number indicates how badly organizations need effective cybersecurity measures in place.
However, cybersecurity career options are like oceans. There are so many cybersecurity job roles available, and the most confusing options are whether to go for cybersecurity or digital forensics. Another doubt is, what’s the difference between them, and what do they include?
In this article, we will be answering all your questions. We will briefly understand how both of them differ and how you can succeed in each of these career paths.
Understanding Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity refers to the general term of protecting an individual, organization, or government’s data, infrastructure, and resources from various kinds of emerging and evolving cyber threats.
There are various processes in cybersecurity field that are designed to protect data, devices, networks, and other sensitive information from unauthorized access and misuse.
Cybersecurity is basically built of CIA Triad that refers to:
- Confidentiality
- Integrity, and
- Availability of information.
According to Fortune Business Insight, the Global Cybersecurity market is projected to grow from USD 193.73 billion in 2024 to USD 562.72 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 14.3% during the forecast period. So, we can infer that organizations are actively seeking to invest and integrate the latest cybersecurity techniques into their business operations., indicating heavy investment in the cybersecurity workforce.
Overview of the Digital Forensics
We commonly know Digital Forensics as cybersecurity forensics. It is a component of cybersecurity that deals with identification, collection, preservation, and analysis of digital evidence to find out the cause of incidents and prepare strong security systems for the future. Digital evidence is also used for legal proceedings and must be preserved with the help of digital forensics tools and techniques.
Digital evidence might include texts, social media posts, browsing history, network logs, software access, etc. This digital evidence has strong military and administrative investigation contexts as well.
Digital forensics or Cybersecurity forensics is slightly different from computer forensics. While the latter is referred to analyzing and investigating evidence in computers, cybersecurity forensics is a broader term including collection and analysis from various sources apart from computer systems, such as networks, GPS devices, cloud infrastructure, etc.
Career Options in Cybersecurity
Now that you have a basic understanding of the differences between Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, you must be interested to know the popular cybersecurity jobs for your career.
Here are the top cybersecurity jobs in demand:
- Incident responder
They are responsible for identifying data breaches and other forms of cyber-attacks and respond to them promptly. They also analyze evidence and data to find the reason behind security incidents.
- Network Security Engineer
These cybersecurity professionals help to protect networks, devices, and sensitive information from various kinds of cyber threats. They also look after implementing virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls, and other essential security efforts.
- Cybersecurity Analyst
Their roles include collecting and analyzing important information related to cyber-attacks and devising robust security systems.
Careers in Digital Forensics
The digital forensics domain is also equally huge and consists of several important cybersecurity job roles such as:
- Information security analyst
Information security analysts help organizations to protect their sensitive information from unauthorized access, manipulation, deletion, or modifications. They will perform risk assessment and management, firewall configuration, intrusion detection and prevention, and so on.
- Computer forensic analyst
Computer forensic analysts help with investigation of digital evidence and identify, collect, and preserve the evidence/data to be used in legal proceedings. They will carry out tasks like data recovery, digital forensics techniques, evidence analysis, etc.
- Cyberdefense forensic analyst
These digital forensics professionals are responsible for investigating cyber-attacks and identifying the source, method, and impact of the attacks. They perform incident response planning and execution, malware analysis, network traffic analysis, etc.
Upgrade your Cybersecurity Skills
The cybersecurity career is full of opportunities. However, the attack tactics and methods of cyber-attacks are evolving rapidly with the advancements in technology. Therefore, if you are looking to make a career in cybersecurity, then you must be willing to upgrade your cybersecurity skills regularly. You can enroll in cybersecurity courses to master cybersecurity concepts. But they can be lengthy and expensive. Therefore, you can consider upgrading your skills through top cybersecurity certification programs. They are short, crisp, and cost-effective solutions to gain and validate cybersecurity skills.
Conclusion
By now, we hope you have understood the difference between cybersecurity and digital forensics. While cybersecurity is a generalized and broader field, the digital forensics is more specific domain related to the investigation of evidence after cyber-attacks. And both these domains offer great career opportunities. So, enroll in top courses and cybersecurity. Certification programs and start your career in cybersecurity now.
