Why Cybersecurity
A career prospectus of Cybersecurity
Illustration by McMillan
Welcome to issue #4 of Product Fundamentals.
I often get asked why I chose to work in the cybersecurity field. Most couldn't understand why someone with the academic background and interest in consumer internet products, would make such a move. I argue, its the best career move I’ve made so far. With that, I present to you some reasons why I chose cybersecurity:
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of my company.
🚀 It’s Early Days
Cybersecurity has traditionally been a niche field. Highly specialized and hard to break in- especially for early-in-career folks.
Academics were the first in, followed by professionals (typically from computer networking backgrounds). Today cybersecurity is more than just network security. It’s about protecting digital assets, wherever they are.
Cybersecurity companies are starting to realize the importance of hiring diversely. Security used to be the same people from Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and Checkpoint just rotating around the valley. Companies now actively look to hire beyond the geographical boundaries of the US and Israel.
With a non-security background today, you get to bring a unique skill/approach that no-one had before. That makes you a pioneer in your own right.
😈 Adversaries need to be right only 1 time.
🦸🏻♂️ You need to be right every time.
In its Annual Global Risk Report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) consistently lists cyber threats as one of the 10 most critical risks threatening the world economy. This is a problem that is here to stay.
Technology is becoming ever complex meaning no solution is a means to an end. PMs need to look into the future to understand potential areas for exploitation in their products. Solving a problem in security is never a means to an end.
The stakes are high. You need to be at the top of your game. Every PM, engineer, and designer needs to think of every possible edge case, forcing you to be thorough and exhaustive in your approach. Every problem, Every feature definition, every release needs to meet the highest standards
Human ➡️ Machine Adversaries
Cyber adversaries are no longer just people hacking from their basements anymore. The cybersecurity industry is dealing with large scale automation and ML-based attacks.
The industry is constantly forced to innovate or perish. You can be assured the opportunity to work on building some of the most cutting edge and sophisticated products.
Tech-literate yet tech-fearing security customers ⚠️
Complex customer requirements make building security products a difficult job. Customers (security professionals) don’t trust easily (maybe rightly so?):
They often want full control over the systems you build.
One would think cybersecurity customers are the earliest adopters of cloud-based solutions given its operational, scale, cost benefits. Contrarily, customers want on-prem solutions whenever possible.
It’s hard to know exactly how your system is being used. Telemetry data is hard to collect. Quant UX research is hard. Challenges and constraints are endless!
Data privacy is not just a buzzword. It’s top of mind in everything we build. As a PM your product, at its core, is ultimately protecting customer data.
Black box approaches don’t work. As a PM you need to find a hard balance between transparency into your systems but ensure that bad actors, as well as competitors cant, take advantage of it.
🛒Big Market = 💰Big Opportunities
Cybersecurity has a $175 Billion TAM which is set to become $270B in 2026.
The industry is among the fastest-growing in tech. There is a huge dearth of talent in cybersecurity with over 3.5 million jobs that go unfilled every year!
High demand + low supply => cybersecurity professionals are among the highest-paid in the tech industry.
Recession-proof business. Regardless of how the economy is doing, adversaries will continue to attempt to breach organizations and users. Companies will constantly need to invest in the latest and greatest solutions.
Cyber is a field with tremendous long term growth ahead of it and no signs of slowing down.
People, Process, Product Fragmentation
The cybersecurity leader of the world, Palo Alto Networks, has only 2% of the global market share
Not only is there no clear dominant winner (unlike Search or Social Network companies), but with over +1500 registered companies in the space (and ever-growing), it is also an incredibly fragmented industry.
It is uncommon for an enterprise company to have more than 1 CRM tool, HR tool, etc. but very common for customers to have multiple security vendors.
This presents an incredible opportunity for companies creating tightly integrated unified platforms that simplify the way in which users consume security.
