See the top technical and behavioral skills and phrases desired by employers.
Technical Skills/Phrases
Core technical skills and phrases employers request most often.
Apply confidentiality, integrity, availability, and least-privilege principles to system design.Model realistic threats and choose controls for the most important abuse paths.Review application architecture, source code, and interfaces for exploitable weaknesses.Add security checks to continuous integration and delivery, the pipelines that build and release software.Harden cloud accounts, storage, networks, and application workloads.Control human and service identities so each receives only the access it needs.Harden Linux systems and protect network boundaries with access rules and segmentation.Secure container images, cluster settings, and workload permissions.Review infrastructure as code, the versioned instructions used to create computing resources.Build and test scripts that automate repetitive defensive tasks safely.Connect endpoint, network, and cloud telemetry, meaning recorded security events and activity.Tune security detections and validate whether alerts identify meaningful threats.Investigate incidents, support containment and recovery, and document lessons learned.Prioritize vulnerabilities by exposure and business impact, then verify remediation.Perform authorized, scoped security testing and explain reproducible findings to system owners.Protect sensitive information and review how vendors and applications use data.Turn governance, risk, compliance, and privacy requirements into controls and usable evidence.Assess artificial intelligence applications for unsafe permissions and data leakage, and validate automated advice.
Behavioral Skills/Phrases
Professional skills and phrases that help candidates collaborate, communicate, and grow into senior roles.
Break an uncertain security problem into testable questions.Explain technical risk in terms that business colleagues can act on.Work with developers and infrastructure teams to resolve findings.Choose priorities calmly when several urgent issues compete for attention.Keep investigation notes accurate enough for another person to follow.Distinguish confirmed evidence from assumptions and unresolved questions.Follow remediation commitments through to a verified result.Use feedback and new evidence to improve working methods.Handle sensitive information with appropriate care and discretion.Negotiate practical security improvements without hiding important risks.Share knowledge so colleagues can operate controls confidently.Organize work independently while escalating decisions that need wider approval.Critical thinkingStakeholder managementTeamworkOwnershipAdaptabilityAttention to detailTime managementProfessional judgmentEthicsCuriosityResilienceInfluence
