In fact, it states that almost one in five jobs are heavily exposed to genetic artificial intelligence. Technology has proven beneficial to cyber careers by automating threat data analysis and allowing cybersecurity professionals to focus more on mitigating risks. And let’s face it, considering the number of high-profile breaches we’ve seen in recent months, from MOVEit to Johnson Controls, cybersecurity professionals need all the help they can get.
Generative AI can be a powerful tool for identifying new risks and alerts, but using it requires a unique skill set. When interviewing cybersecurity candidates, I look for three critical skills: lateral thinking, persistence, and communication.
1. Lateral thinking
While many employers emphasize problem-solving skills in job descriptions, the ability to think outside the box is imperative in cybersecurity. Candidates must be able to pivot quickly when faced with real-time risks and threats. For example, a good candidate with lateral thinking skills will consider how new technologies such as genetic artificial intelligence can be integrated into existing resources to more quickly identify security risks and streamline operations.
Candidates must be able to pivot quickly when faced with real-time risks and threats.
In addition to its advantages, genetic AI introduces data security and privacy concerns that we cannot ignore. While candidates should know how to use this technology to their advantage, they also need to understand how large language models (LLM) can leverage and undermine organizations’ internal data. Not surprisingly, nearly half of executives are concerned that incorporating genetic AI will result in new attacks against their AI models, services or data;. Security professionals should be proactive and ask how new threats can bypass existing tools and processes. They must be able to look for new ways to approach challenges, whether they are assuming the attacker’s point of view or discovering new vulnerabilities.
To gauge whether a candidate possesses lateral thinking skills, the interviewer should focus on situational questions that show how they used different resources to overcome a challenge. I often ask, “Tell me about a time when you faced significant ambiguity or limited information and had to take action.”
