Cybersecurity engineers work in multiple capacities, similar to their IT systems engineer brethren. Within their role and function, cybersecurity engineers maintain the care and feeding of the cybersecurity tools they have deployed. Every cybersecurity tool deployed to fulfill the requirements of a cybersecurity program needs personnel to implement, maintain, manage, update, patch, upgrade, and generally manage supporting tools. This is the bulk of cybersecurity engineer roles and functions.

Solutions engineering is needed from a consulting, integrator, and value-added reseller perspective. Likewise, companies may need short- and long-term personnel to support their purchased cybersecurity tools. Staff augmentation and resident engineers will operate similarly to their corporate cybersecurity engineer brethren.

On the product side, vendors will need cybersecurity engineers with hardware and software design and development backgrounds to create the cybersecurity tools companies will purchase and deploy. There will be a heavy emphasis on software and hardware engineering, generally not present within other categories. These are far more in-depth roles and functions with breadth of knowledge and competency with specific technologies.

Additionally, ethical hacking and malware reverse engineering specialties are needed in government, corporate, commercial, and product categories. Some cybersecurity specialty roles and functions will fall under cybersecurity engineering.

Cybersecurity engineer types are divided into government, corporate, commercial, and product to differentiate core differences between those that consult and integrate with cybersecurity engineers that develop cybersecurity tools and technologies.

One of the critical elements of standardization around competencies and tasks is developing consistent job descriptions and titles. Currently, the variation and variety of job descriptions and titles in the cybersecurity engineer space are immense and inconsistent or not standardized. In addition, there are many odd variations, a lack of understanding of the roles and functions, a misunderstanding of necessary or needed skill sets, or a general misunderstanding of the differences between engineers and architects. Subsequently, this leads to confusion about what the role should be doing or encompass from a skill set perspective.

The skills, competencies, and tasks are presented in a manner that hiring managers can pull from to develop a consistent set of job descriptions. The premise presented here will help reduce job descriptions and title variations while producing more targeted and appropriate roles and functions within a cybersecurity program. As a result, companies across industry sectors can standardize their job descriptions, position titles, and position levels. Likewise, hiring managers can develop a skillset and competency view across their teams to define empirically where they have actual skillset shortages or deficiencies.

Cybersecurity engineering encompasses multiple roles covering on-premises, hybrid, and cloud technology deployments. Some roles will move beyond just caring for and feeding cybersecurity tooling. This can make it difficult to decide on a certification direction, as certifications to date have been somewhat scattered across various role skill sets. This is an attempt to document certifications that are more relevant and related to cybersecurity engineering. People may have acquired other certifications throughout their careers that are foundationally relevant. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Getting certifications is a personal choice. It is generally up to the individual to decide whether they want to put the time, effort, and money into achieving them. Some hiring managers want to see them, while others do not. Additionally, please note that the mileage may vary depending on the quality of learning outcomes associated with certifications.