A Day in the Life of a Cyber Security Specialist

We talk all things cybersecurity with professional specialist and Monash IT alumna, Yi Su.

This post is presented in partnership with Monash Faculty of Information Technology.

Are you considering entering into the wonderful world of cybersecurity?

It’s an exciting and challenging industry—and it’s rapidly growing! We caught up with Yi Su, a cybersecurity specialist who’s killing it in her field.

She walked us through a day in her life, and all her favourite parts of the gig.

No day is ever totally the same.

Yi told us how her day to day can be very different, aside from some routine meetings.

“Depending on the day or the project we’re working on, the manager will assign us tasks, or we might have some to continue to complete," she said.

This is arranged in a morning stand-up meeting which sets the agenda for the day.

Yi explained that she’s always engaged, with “a few meetings internally or externally with clients”—so there’s never a dull moment!

The projects vary all the time.

Prepare yourself for some tech-speak—Yi walked us through the project she’s working on right now, and what some other projects are like.

“I’m currently working on a digital risk management project, for control maturity assessments […] but there are also digital identity projects which involve identity and access management.”

(Yeah, we have no idea what all that means, either. Lucky for us, Yi provided some clarification).

“Imagine an employee at a company who needs access to many of the applications or files. But we don’t want to grant every employee with full access—for example, an employee working in HR probably doesn’t need access to finance department applications."

Capeesh?

As you can tell, there’s a lot of variety in her projects, and a lot of things to learn.

She’s surrounded by incredible people who encourage her to grow.

We asked Yi what her favourite thing about working in cybersecurity was, and she gave us the most wholesome answer.

“I think my favourite thing would be working with highly intelligent and driven colleagues. They are very knowledgeable, very patient and always there to help.”

“There are a lot of things to learn and a lot of things happening in this space, so every day is a new day.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

Yi told us a bit about her cybersecurity journey before landing a job, and how she came up against some challenges along the way.

“I believe that where there is a will, there’s a way. Even if you feel like it’s hard at the beginning, there’s definitely different ways and approaches to get wherever you want to be.”

She says she had “limited knowledge” before joining her role and didn’t originally study cybersecurity specifically, but her IT degree was able to open her up to a lot of different pathways.

“You can always learn on the job. For graduate roles they don’t expect much—it’s more about if you learn quickly and demonstrate your soft skills.”

Yi encourages you to take the leap and study cybersecurity if it’s something that sounds interesting to you!

Monash offers the highest number of cybersecurity units out of any other university. Check them out here and begin your path to becoming a certified cyber warrior.