Introduction to Source Code Auditor and Penetration Tester Job Opportunities
In the past few articles, I have been covering various entry level cybersecurity job opportunities. In last week’s article, I covered 7-8th of the top 10 entry-level cybersecurity jobs – Cyber Security Auditor and Cyber Forensic Expert. In this article, I am going to talk about the last two job opportunities in the list provided in first article – Source Code Auditor and Penetration Tester, mainly about those job features/responsibilities, skills, qualifications, certifications, salary, job titles and career progressions.
Source Code Auditor Job Opportunities :-
The sooner the bugs or issues in a application are discovered, the less expensive it is to fix it, later it can cost ten to a hundred times the original cost to fix a bug or to mitigate a disaster after an app is publicly released. A source code auditor or security code auditor thoroughly examines the source code of a software application to assess its quality, security and compliance with coding standards. This includes analyzing the application’s code for vulnerabilities, potential bugs, and compliance with best practices, identifying and resolving potential risks, and thereby improving overall code quality. Source code auditing is an excellent way to identify vulnerabilities that go undetected during the application security testing or penetration testing process with the help of scanning tools and manual reviews to detect insecure coding practices, backdoors, injection flaws, cross site scripting flaws, insecure/incorrect handling of external resources, weak cryptography, etc.
For this post they should preferably have a degree/diploma in computer related subject, mainly they should have knowledge of various operating system, networking and system administration, security tools/utilities, digital forensics, database, hacking, legal and project management skills. In addition, non-technical skills such as analytical thinking, problem solving, communication, team spirit and keen vision help. Industry certifications like ISACA’s Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) can help you get a better job/salary. You can expect a salary of 5-15 lakhs in the first year for this job. Here you typically start as Source Code Auditor and move up to Senior/Lead Source Code Auditor, Cyber Security Manager/Consultant/Vice President.
Penetration Tester Job Opportunities :-
A penetration tester, or pen tester for short, conducts simulated cyber attacks on the computer systems and networks of any organization. These official tests help to identify security flaws and weaknesses in those computer systems and networks before malicious hackers can exploit them. Their job functions and responsibilities include – designing and conducting simulated attacks including social engineering attacks, researching and testing various types of cyber attacks, developing methods/tools for penetration testing, code review for security vulnerabilities, reporting of security and compliance issues.
For this post they should preferably have a degree/diploma in computer related subject, mainly they should have knowledge of various operating system, networking and system administration, security tool/utilities, digital forensics, database, hacking, legal and project management skills. In addition, they should good at non-technical skills such as analytical thinking, problem solving, communication, team spirit and keen vision. Industry certifications like Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), CompTIA PenTest+, GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN), GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT) and Certified Penetration Tester (CPT) can help you get a better job/salary. For this job you can expect a salary of 3-19 lakhs in the first year. Here you typically start as Penetration Tester and move up to Senior/Lead Penetration Tester, Cyber Security Manager/Consultant/Architect.
Where can we learn these cyber security skills?
You can learn the above mentioned technical and non-technical skills in either offline or online mode. You can learn in offline mode in colleges (Karnataka and India) and also in online mode as part of diploma, degree, post graduation or certification course, such courses are also available to you for free (YouTube, udemy, simplilearn etc.) but to prove your knowledge learned to prospective employers, you may need to do certifications for your preferred job mentioned above.
