The truth is that no two days are ever the same. What makes cybersecurity consulting exciting is that fact that anything can come through the door: you can be carrying out a cybersecurity maturity assessment on a global retail company one day and be responding to a ransomware attack on a hardware manufacturer the next. What stays constant are the skills you need throughout – you always need to be level-headed, clear, personable and authoritative to ensure the best outcomes for your clients.
My route into the field was not a traditional one by any means! I did a literature-based BA and MA, before embarking on an interdisciplinary PhD which brought together literature, history, politics, psychoanalysis, gender studies and race theory to investigate the cultural underpinnings of resilience in relation to crisis.
When I started, I had plans for a career in academia – I soon realised, though, that the often-solitary and highly bureaucratic nature of the field wasn’t for me. Pivoting out of the academy seemed like an enormous challenge. However, when I made a list of the skills I’d acquired and honed over these years – critical thinking, advanced research capabilities, analysis, and communication chief amongst them – I realised that these were hugely transferable.
When I saw the job posting for my role on LinkedIn specifically asking for these skills, I was thrilled – the job spoke to my background in crisis and resilience, called upon the very capabilities I’d built as an academic, and appealed to my general interest in the interaction of people and technology. Although I didn’t have a cybersecurity background, a willingness to learn and possession of some key skills got me the job – and the rest is history!
Some of the most common misconceptions about cybersecurity are contained in the image that most often represents the field on the public stage – that our industry is wholly comprised of people wearing hoodies in dark rooms, hacking away at computers. Of course, cybersecurity has its technical elements; some of our most valuable team members are our technical staff, capable of understanding the most complex network architecture and analysing challenging digital forensics.
However – especially in a consultancy context – one of the most important skills for a professional in the field to have is the ability to problem solve on micro and macro levels. You need to be able to understand a problem within the context it arises and think through its dynamics and various dimensions to provide a solution. Whilst some level of technical knowledge is of course necessary – and can be acquired by anyone with enough determination – an appetite for challenge, curiosity, responsiveness, critical thinking and initiative are key. If you have these core capabilities, a career in cybersecurity may well be for you.
What I enjoy most and what I find most challenging actually go hand-in-hand: anticipating our clients’ needs. Our team pride ourselves on our ability to be proactive – not only in identifying exactly where an issue lies and what’s causing it, but in providing and helping to implement effective solutions.
Our clients often come to us in times of distress and anxiety in the aftermath of a cybersecurity incident. In these instances, we have to manage emotions as well as the practical situation at hand. Both cybersecurity and consultancy have people at their heart – navigating the dynamics of the interpersonal relationships on which our success as consultants and cybersecurity professionals relies is the most exciting and challenging part of my job.
The truth is that no two days are ever the same. What makes cybersecurity consulting exciting is that fact that anything can come through the door: you can be carrying out a cybersecurity maturity assessment on a global retail company one day and be responding to a ransomware attack on a hardware manufacturer the next. What stays constant are the skills you need throughout – you always need to be level-headed, clear, personable and authoritative to ensure the best outcomes for your clients.
FTI’s slogan is ‘Experts with Impact’ – and I believe that is what sets the company apart. Everyone who works at FTI is either an established expert in their field or committed to becoming one. In addition to allowing the firm to boast an incredible array of skillsets and tackle an enormous range of client issues, the business – at all levels – is full of intellectually curious people who aspire to be the best in their respective spaces. Coupled with the concerted and committed efforts the firm is making to increase diversity and gender parity, this makes FTI an inspiring and growth-oriented place to work.
