Top 12 Cyber Security Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume
In a world where attackers pivot fast and quietly, cyber security analysts guard the gates and the plumbing behind them. A strong resume doesn’t just list tools; it shows judgment, range, and proof you can keep systems calm under pressure.
Cyber Security Analyst Skills
1. Python
Python is a high-level language known for clarity and flexibility. In security work it’s the glue and the scalpel—automation, parsing logs, testing assumptions, building quick detectors, stitching APIs, even taming messy data.
Why It's Important
It accelerates repetitive work, sharpens investigations, and lets analysts build custom tools instead of waiting for vendors. Faster loops, fewer manual errors, stronger coverage.
How to Improve Python Skills
Go beyond basics: Learn async patterns, decorators, context managers, typing, and packaging. Write code that’s both quick and safe to change.
Lean on security libraries: Explore scapy, cryptography, paramiko, requests, pydantic, and pandas for ingestion, protocol tinkering, and validation.
Build small, sharp tools: A network scanner, a log normalizer, a file triage utility, a IOC enricher. Ship them. Iterate.
Automate workflows: Glue SIEM, ticketing, threat intel, and EDR through APIs. Make enrichment and triage hum without hands.
Compete and practice: CTFs and labs harden instincts. Focus on forensics, traffic analysis, and exploit demos where Python earns its keep.
Read other people’s code: Study open-source responders, packer detectors, and parsers. Borrow patterns; trim the bloat.
Keep a tight toolbox and a habit of testing. Unit tests pay off when incidents spike.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
2. Wireshark
Wireshark is a protocol microscope. It captures packets, dissects them, and shows what truly happened on the wire.
Why It's Important
When logs mislead or hide detail, packets don’t lie. You can confirm exfil paths, spot C2 beacons, validate TLS settings, and reconstruct the timeline.
How to Improve Wireshark Skills
Master filters: Build muscle memory for display and capture filters. Save profiles for web, DNS, email, auth, and lateral movement sessions.
Tame the noise: Use color rules, protocol preferences, and column sets to surface what matters—SNI, JA3/JA4, TCP flags, DNS RR types.
Use TShark: Script repeatable extractions, export fields, and batch-process pcaps. Great for large hunts.
Decrypt where allowed: Practice TLS key logging and Kerberos/SMB decryption in lab environments to understand inner flows.
Work real pcaps: Analyze malware traffic, phishing kits, and noisy scans. Build a library of known-good and known-bad traces.
Document patterns: Keep a playbook of beacon intervals, handshake quirks, DNS tunneling tells, and odd header combos.
How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume
3. Linux
Linux is the backbone of much of the internet and many security stacks. It’s scriptable, observable, and transparent—ideal for hardening and hunting.
Why It's Important
Servers, containers, appliances, and cloud images rely on it. Knowing Linux means you can lock it down, watch it closely, and recover it when trouble hits.
How to Improve Linux Skills
Patch relentlessly: Automate updates and kernel fixes. Track high-risk CVEs that touch your fleet.
Harden entrances: Configure SSH with keys, disable root login, restrict ciphers, rotate ports responsibly, and add port knocking if appropriate.
Mandatory access controls: Use SELinux or AppArmor with sane, tested policies. Start permissive, monitor denials, then enforce.
Audit and logs: Enable auditd, systemd-journald forwarding, process accounting, and FIM. Tag critical paths and auth events.
Network controls: Use ufw or firewalld and iptables/nftables for tight egress and segmented ingress. Default deny, then open with intent.
Service hygiene: Remove unneeded daemons, restrict sudo, and use tmpfs or noexec where feasible.
Detection stack: Deploy Falco or similar rules, plus an IDS like Suricata or Snort. Pair with a SIEM or log pipeline.
Backups and recovery: Snapshots, offline backups, tested restores. Ransomware drills aren’t optional.
Security distros for practice: Use Kali or Parrot in labs; don’t mix test tools on production hosts.
Keep learning: Follow distro security advisories and kernel changes that impact containers, namespaces, and LSMs.
How to Display Linux Skills on Your Resume
4. Splunk
Splunk ingests machine data at scale and makes it searchable. For blue teams, it becomes a hub for alerts, hunts, and stories told with dashboards.
Why It's Important
It shortens time-to-detect and time-to-know. You can correlate signals, pivot across sources, and measure impact in minutes instead of hours.
How to Improve Splunk Skills
Own SPL: Learn eval, stats, transaction, timechart, tstats, and datamodels. Performance matters—optimize early.
Normalize events: Map sources to CIM. Clean fields, enforce timestamps, and standardize host/app/source.
Build content that works: High-signal detections with thresholds, risk-based rules, and suppression logic. Tune weekly.
Use accelerations carefully: Summary indexes and accelerated datamodels boost speed if you manage costs.
Automate response: Trigger tickets, enrich with context, and hand off to SOAR playbooks where it saves time.
Benchmark and budget: Watch license, storage, and search concurrency. Index less junk; keep more value.
How to Display Splunk Skills on Your Resume
5. Nessus
Nessus is a staple for vulnerability assessment. It scans assets, flags weaknesses, and helps you rank what to fix first.
Why It's Important
Consistent, credentialed scanning reveals risky versions, misconfigs, and missing patches before adversaries do.
How to Improve Nessus Skills
Keep plugins fresh: Update often so new CVEs are covered. Stale feeds miss real issues.
Prefer credentialed scans: They see deeper, reduce false positives, and expose configuration drift.
Tune for impact: Calibrate scan windows, throttling, and targets so production stays stable.
Filter with intent: Focus on exploitable, high-impact findings first. Tag internet-facing assets separately.
Right-size policies: Separate policies for servers, workstations, containers, and network appliances. One size fits nobody.
Integrate: Send results to your SIEM, ticketing, and patch tools. Track remediation time.
Report trends: Show burn-down of criticals and exposure windows. Celebrate the drop, not the count.
How to Display Nessus Skills on Your Resume
6. SIEM
SIEM platforms aggregate logs, correlate events, and spotlight trouble in real time. They’re the operations cockpit.
Why It's Important
Without correlation and context, signals drown. SIEMs connect dots, enforce compliance reporting, and trigger action before impact grows.
How to Improve SIEM Skills
Tune rules constantly: Retire noisy detections, add threat-informed ones, and adapt to new TTPs. Weekly hygiene keeps fidelity high.
Bring in threat intel: Curate quality feeds, de-duplicate, enrich, and expire indicators. Focus on context, not just lists.
Collect the right logs: Prioritize auth, endpoint telemetry, DNS, proxy, email, identity, and cloud control-plane events. Less noise, more story.
Automate triage: Use playbooks for enrichment, user/context lookups, and simple containment. Analysts stay on the hard stuff.
Measure outcomes: Track mean time to detect and respond. Tune until those numbers fall.
Lean on analytics: Anomaly models and behavior analytics can catch the weird, but only if you feed clean data and review drifts.
Exercise the process: Run tabletop drills and red-team simulations. Fix what slows you down.
How to Display SIEM Skills on Your Resume
7. Firewall
Firewalls gate traffic with rules. From traditional stateful filters to next-gen inspection, they shape what can talk to what—and how.
Why It's Important
A sane baseline stops noise and many attacks outright. Good segmentation and policy hygiene starve lateral movement.
How to Improve Firewall Skills
Update firmware: Patch devices and management planes. Vulnerable firewalls make ugly headlines.
Audit rules quarterly: Remove or tighten stale permits, document business justifications, and sort rules by criticality.
Use threat intel: Apply curated IP/domain lists with expiration. Don’t hoard dead indicators.
Layer defenses: Pair firewalls with IDS/IPS, DNS filtering, and egress controls. Depth over hope.
Secure remote access: Enforce MFA for VPN and Zero Trust Network Access, restrict split tunneling, and log everything.
Pen-test paths: Validate segmentation and egress blocks. Try to break out; fix what lets you.
Train users: Social engineering slips past any box. Awareness reduces bad clicks and credential leaks.
Segment ruthlessly: Separate crown jewels, admin networks, OT, and user zones. Limit blast radius.
How to Display Firewall Skills on Your Resume
8. Cryptography
Cryptography protects confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. It underpins trust—at rest, in motion, everywhere.
Why It's Important
From passwords to payments to firmware updates, crypto makes tampering costly and mistakes obvious.
How to Improve Cryptography Skills
Choose modern primitives: Prefer AES-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305, SHA-256/3, and Ed25519. Retire MD5 and SHA-1 entirely.
Keys are everything: Generate with strong entropy, rotate, scope permissions narrowly, and store in HSMs or managed key services. Plan revocation.
Implement TLS correctly: Enforce latest protocol versions, strong ciphers, OCSP stapling, HSTS, and certificate pinning where appropriate.
Avoid rolling your own: Use vetted libraries, constant-time operations, and safe defaults. Side channels bite.
Audit and test: Threat model misuse, fuzz parsers, and run penetration tests. Verify secure erase and backup handling.
Watch the standards: Track recommendations and deprecations, including progress on post-quantum algorithms.
How to Display Cryptography Skills on Your Resume
9. Nmap
Nmap maps networks, probes ports, fingerprints services, and uses scripts to uncover weaknesses. Quick scans or deep dives—your call.
Why It's Important
It reveals exposure. You learn what’s open, what’s old, and where attackers would knock first.
How to Improve Nmap Skills
Pick the right scans: SYN scans for stealth (
-sS), version detection for detail (-sV), all ports when it matters (-p-), and targeted lists for precision.Use NSE wisely: Start with default and vuln scripts, then tailor. Review outputs for false positives.
Time and pace: Adjust timing templates to avoid noisy spikes. Respect fragile networks.
Output formats: Save to XML and grepable output for later parsing, dashboards, or diffs.
Integrate: Pair results with Wireshark for packet context and feed findings into ticketing and CMDBs.
Practice diffing: Compare scans over time to catch new services, sudden closures, or unplanned changes.
How to Display Nmap Skills on Your Resume
10. IDS/IPS
IDS watches traffic and raises alerts. IPS steps in and blocks. Together they catch and curb badness in motion.
Why It's Important
They provide real-time visibility and enforcement, catching malware, brute force, scanning, and command-and-control patterns before they bloom.
How to Improve IDS/IPS Skills
Patch and update: Keep signatures, engines, and decrypt helpers current. New exploits move fast.
Tune to your network: Customize rules, set thresholds, and whitelist known-good chatter to slash false positives.
Behavior matters: Add anomaly and ML-driven detections where quality data exists. Verify with human review.
Decrypt where permitted: Inspect encrypted traffic with lawful, scoped decryption. Focus on high-risk segments.
Segment feeds: Monitor east-west and north-south separately. Different baselines, different alerts.
Threat hunt: Use IDS data as leads. Hunt laterals, odd beaconing, and policy bypasses.
Test block modes: Start in alert-only, measure, then move to prevention on high-confidence rules.
How to Display IDS/IPS Skills on Your Resume
11. AWS
AWS delivers cloud compute, storage, identity, and networking primitives. Security work here means engineering with shared responsibility in mind.
Why It's Important
Cloud estates shift quickly. Strong AWS skills let you design guardrails, observe drift, and respond before risks erupt.
How to Improve AWS Skills
Nail the model: Understand what AWS secures and what you must secure. Design controls around that line.
Identity first: Use IAM roles, least privilege, permission boundaries, SCPs, and MFA. Centralize access with identity federation.
Encrypt by default: Turn on encryption at rest and in transit, manage keys carefully, and monitor key usage.
Watch the control plane: Enable CloudTrail everywhere, log to immutable buckets, and alert on sensitive API calls.
Continuously assess: Use Config rules, Inspector, and Security Hub to surface misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.
Network smartly: Security groups over permissive NACLs, VPC endpoints for services, and strict egress controls.
Harden workloads: Baseline AMIs, patch pipelines, runtime controls for containers and serverless, and guardrails via IaC.
Automate response: Event-driven remediation for public S3, risky security groups, or disabled logging. Humans verify, bots act first.
Test incident flow: Practice isolation, snapshotting, memory capture, and forensics in cloud. Time matters.
Stay current: Cloud services evolve; review release notes and update controls routinely.
How to Display AWS Skills on Your Resume
12. Blockchain
Blockchain is a distributed ledger that resists tampering through consensus and cryptography. Data becomes hard to alter without leaving marks.
Why It's Important
For analysts, it’s about integrity and provenance. You get auditability, trust-minimized coordination, and verifiable histories.
How to Improve Blockchain Skills
Audit everything: Review node configs, access paths, and governance. Validate that assumptions match reality.
Harden smart contracts: Use formal analysis, linters, and peer review. Look for reentrancy, overflow, and access control flaws.
Strengthen consensus: Understand attack surfaces—51% control, long-range, MEV exploits—and design countermeasures.
Monitor the chain: Track mempools, anomaly spikes, and contract interactions. Alert on odd flows and rare opcode patterns.
Key custody: Enforce secure key storage, quorum approvals, and hardware-backed signing. Rotate and recover cleanly.
Plan for tomorrow: Keep an eye on post-quantum cryptography and how migration would unfold.
Educate stakeholders: Misconfigurations and social engineering still break systems. Training matters.
How to Display Blockchain Skills on Your Resume
