Here are the keywords and skills that appear most frequently on recent Information Security Specialist job postings. In other words, these are the most sought after skills by recruiters and hiring managers. Go to Sample Templates ↓ below to see how to include them on your resume.
Remember that every job is different. Instead of including all keywords on your resume, identify those that are most relevant to the job you're applying to. Use the free Targeted Resume tool to help with this.
Does your resume contain all the right skills? Paste in your resume in the AI Resume Scan ↓ section below and get an instant score.
Paste your resume below and our AI will identify which keywords are missing from your resume from the list above (and what you need to include). Including the right keywords will help you get past Applicant Tracking Systems (i.e. resume screeners) which may scan your resume for keywords to see if you're a match for the job.
Go through the Information Security Specialist posting you're applying to, and identify hard skills the company is looking for. For example, skills like Firewalls, ISO 27001 and Information Security are possible skills. These are skills you should try to include on your resume.
The following word cloud highlights the most popular keywords that appear on Information Security Specialist job descriptions. The bigger the word, the more frequently it shows up on employer's job postings. If you have experience with these keywords, include them on your resume.
Here are examples of proven resumes in related jobs and industries, approved by experienced hiring managers. Use them as inspiration when you're writing your own resume. You can even download and edit the resume template in Google Docs.
A CIO — sometimes referred to interchangeably as a Chief Technology Officer — is the executive in charge of a company’s technology and research and development departments. As a CIO, you’ll be charged with leading your company’s technology strategy, keeping up to date with new trends, making sure systems are running smoothly, and liaising with executives from other departments to ensure the technological needs of the entire company are being met.
CIOs need technological know-how, but as you progress along the corporate ladder, the importance of specific technical skills becomes balanced by the need for soft skills like leadership. Instead of listing these as you would normal hard skills, use your bullet points to illustrate how you’ve put these skills to use in a corporate environment.
When writing your bullet points, take a moment to consider whether adding a little more information would help them sound even more impressive. Managing a $200,000 annual budget for a small business is a very different accomplishment than managing a $15 million annual budget for a multinational corporation, so be specific about the context of your achievements.
As the most senior technology executive, a CIO needs to demonstrate skills in project management, finance, and strategy, as well as technical skills like coding, programming, and mapping. Your resume should balance showcasing executive-level leadership, communication, and management skills with hard skills in SQL, operating systems, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and software management.
When it comes to C-level positions, potential employers don’t just want to know what you’ve accomplished, they want to know the impact your actions had on the company’s bottom line. Including hard metrics — whether that’s 55% improved efficiency in a system you designed or a 300% increase in net profit — will explicitly highlight that.
If you’ve worked your way up to a C-level position, chances are you have a fairly extensive work history. You don’t need to include your entire background on your resume — focus on the most recent and most relevant positions (usually the past 10-15 years) and omit the rest.
An IT Security Manager specializes in all things security for an organization’s information technology, including protection, disaster recovery, virus detection, security breach response, and more. Especially for certain industries such as health or finance, it is of the utmost importance for companies to properly protect sensitive customer data. When crafting your IT Security Manager resume, emphasize your expertise in the cybersecurity space and detail your relevant skills and certifications.
It’s important to demonstrate your competence throughout past positions in maintaining the integrity of computer systems and infrastructure. Like an IT Manager or IT Infrastructure Manager, this position is heavily project-oriented, so you should outline successful projects where you made an impact on the organization. Include aspects of the project such as scope and outcome, and be specific as you can with details.
Cybersecurity is a highly specialized skill, and the soundness of a company’s information security is extremely important in many industries. Make sure to carefully read through the job description to see what kind of software, languages, and/or hardware that the organization uses to manage their information. When hiring for this role, recruiters are looking for extensive experience and a clear understanding of what the role entails, and you’ll want to reflect that in your resume.
A cyber security analyst is a professional who works to protect a company from cyber security hardware and software attacks. In addition to typical IT tasks like ensuring the organization’s software is up-to-date and monitoring networks for potential attacks or security risks, they also educate employees in other departments about potential security risks and how to avoid them. The best security analysts are also researching new security threats to stay ahead of constantly changing threats.
This resume effectively shows a mid-level cyber security professional’s ongoing growth and specialization. They have an excellent foundation with a computer science degree, obtained a cyber security specialization certificate, and applied it to their career path. Since the analyst wants to specialize in government and private security, it’s extremely effective to list their security clearance front and center.
One aspect of cyber security is dealing with outside regulatory agencies to ensure standards are being met. You should always note when you’ve had to work with these agencies or standards (e.g. the Department of Energy, HIPAA, etc.) as they increase your value in these niches.
If you have some roles that were foundational to your knowledge of cyber security, but not necessarily in the field, you can highlight the skills that you used in that role that helped to develop your knowledge of cyber security before you became a specialist.
In some ways, you can think of a cyber security engineer as a higher-level cyber security analyst. A cyber security engineer performs many of the same tasks but is working at a higher level on the network as well as more strategically. Often, they’ll use tools like penetration tests to see where the vulnerabilities are in their system and are the architects of programs to combat them. They’re usually the go-to person for creating and explaining security procedures and protocols of a company.
As an applicant with 10+ years of relevant experience, this job seeker is right to focus more on their impressive job experience, letting the skill box become secondary. He or she allocates more space to their recent experience, which brings together their technical skills with their ability to manage teams. This puts them in competition for top-tier jobs roles, like a chief information security officer (CISO).
You should always support your claims of success with data, which is particularly accessible in the cyber security industry as you’re the one reporting it to the company. Whenever possible, if you can make this data tell a story of change focused on impact. For example, instead of saying, “identified x bugs,” you would instead say, “identified x bugs which lead to an y% increase in productivity.”
Resumes these days are almost always run through an automated program to narrow the number of resumes they read. As a cyber security professional, you can tailor this skill box to jobs you apply to quite easily. As a bonus, in an industry so focused on certifications and demonstrable skill sets, because you’ve already listed the baseline skills in a clear, direct way, you can utilize your job experience section to display particular successes.
ATS (applicant tracking system) filters. - Cyber Security Engineer Resume"/>
Cyber security consultants perform many of the same functions as cyber security engineers, but they are hired (either as agencies or individuals) to work for clients. Often this means that they’re evaluating systems for vulnerabilities, setting up a new and functional system, and then leaving the client to maintain the system with internal personnel.
Cyber security consultants represent a unique skill set in the industry. Because they are hired from outside of the organization in need, they have to have equally high standards in their ability to work with diverse companies, understanding and communicating with those they often don’t have long-term relationships with, and in their wide but deep technical expertise, which allows them to recognize problems efficiently and in different settings. Unlike other roles in the cyber security industry, consultants are constantly proving their worth (just as a freelancer would).
If you scan just the first word of each of these bullet points, they each have a different descriptive and action verb which is technical and highlights a core cyber security skill set. This gives your writing energy and (in combination with data points) places you in the active role in all of your work.
On top Information Security Specialist resumes, skills like Information Security, ISO 27001, Information Security Management, Network Security, Cybersecurity, Firewalls, Vulnerability Assessment and Vulnerability Management appear most often.
Depending on the exact role you're applying to, skills like Threat & Vulnerability Management, Penetration Testing, Incident Response, Identity & Access Management (IAM) and IT Management can also be effective keywords to include on your resume.
While the keywords above are a good indication of what skills you need on your resume, you should try to find additional keywords that are specific to the job. To do this, use the free Targeted Resume tool. It analyzes the job you are applying to and finds the most important keywords you need on your resume.
It is personalized to your resume, and is the best way to ensure your resume will pass the automated resume filters.
Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.
