4 answers
Jo
Student
Rochester, Minnesota
5
Questions
Asked
956 views
Translated from German .
Wie sieht Ihr Alltag aus?
What does your daily routine look like?
At school, I researched professions I would like to pursue. I chose cybersecurity in general; one of the questions was: "What does a typical workday look like in this profession?" I wondered what an average day is like for people who work in the field of cybersecurity.
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4 answers
Kirthi KN
Computers
35
Answers
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Updated
Kirthi’s Answer
Hi Jo,
It is great that you are researching this now. The tricky thing about "Cybersecurity" is that it isn't just one job—it is dozens of different roles.
To give you the best answer for your school project, I will describe the daily routine of the most common entry-level role: a SOC Analyst (Security Operations Center Analyst). These are the "First Responders" of the digital world.
Here is what a typical day looks like for a SOC Analyst.
The "Defender" Routine (SOC Analyst)
8:00 AM – The Handoff Cybersecurity never sleeps. You arrive at the office (or log in remotely) and get a briefing from the night shift team. They tell you if anything suspicious happened overnight while you were sleeping.
The workplace often looks like "Mission Control"—lots of screens displaying live data traffic.
9:00 AM – Triage (Sorting Alerts) You sit at your dashboard. Automated tools scan the network and flag weird behavior. Your screen might show 50 "alerts."
The Job: You have to decide: Is this a real hacker, or just an employee who forgot their password? You clear the false alarms quickly.
11:00 AM – The Investigation (Deep Dive) You find something real. Maybe a computer in the Accounting department is trying to connect to a suspicious server in another country.
Action: You isolate that computer (disconnect it from the network) to stop the infection. You start digging into the logs to see how the virus got in. Was it a phishing email? A bad USB drive?
1:00 PM – Documentation & Reporting This is the part movies don't show. You have to write down everything you found. You create a "ticket" explaining the incident so the senior engineers can fix the root cause.
3:00 PM – "Threat Hunting" & Learning If things are quiet, you don't just wait. You proactively search the network for hidden threats ("Threat Hunting"). You also spend this time reading news about new hacker techniques. In this field, if you stop learning for a month, you are already behind.
5:00 PM – Shift Change You summarize your day for the evening team coming in, ensuring they know which investigations are still open.
Alternative Routine: The "Attacker" (Penetration Tester)
If you choose the "Offensive" side (Ethical Hacking), your day looks different:
Morning: You sign a contract with a client giving you permission to hack them. You spend hours researching their employees on LinkedIn and scanning their website for weak spots.
Afternoon: You try to break in. You might write a custom script to bypass their login screen.
End of Day: You write a very long report explaining exactly how you broke in and how they can fix it.
A Note for Rochester, MN
Since you are in Rochester, you are right next to the Mayo Clinic. Hospitals have massive cybersecurity teams to protect patient data. That is a great place to look for internships or shadowing opportunities in the future to see this routine in real life.
Good luck with your project!
It is great that you are researching this now. The tricky thing about "Cybersecurity" is that it isn't just one job—it is dozens of different roles.
To give you the best answer for your school project, I will describe the daily routine of the most common entry-level role: a SOC Analyst (Security Operations Center Analyst). These are the "First Responders" of the digital world.
Here is what a typical day looks like for a SOC Analyst.
The "Defender" Routine (SOC Analyst)
8:00 AM – The Handoff Cybersecurity never sleeps. You arrive at the office (or log in remotely) and get a briefing from the night shift team. They tell you if anything suspicious happened overnight while you were sleeping.
The workplace often looks like "Mission Control"—lots of screens displaying live data traffic.
9:00 AM – Triage (Sorting Alerts) You sit at your dashboard. Automated tools scan the network and flag weird behavior. Your screen might show 50 "alerts."
The Job: You have to decide: Is this a real hacker, or just an employee who forgot their password? You clear the false alarms quickly.
11:00 AM – The Investigation (Deep Dive) You find something real. Maybe a computer in the Accounting department is trying to connect to a suspicious server in another country.
Action: You isolate that computer (disconnect it from the network) to stop the infection. You start digging into the logs to see how the virus got in. Was it a phishing email? A bad USB drive?
1:00 PM – Documentation & Reporting This is the part movies don't show. You have to write down everything you found. You create a "ticket" explaining the incident so the senior engineers can fix the root cause.
3:00 PM – "Threat Hunting" & Learning If things are quiet, you don't just wait. You proactively search the network for hidden threats ("Threat Hunting"). You also spend this time reading news about new hacker techniques. In this field, if you stop learning for a month, you are already behind.
5:00 PM – Shift Change You summarize your day for the evening team coming in, ensuring they know which investigations are still open.
Alternative Routine: The "Attacker" (Penetration Tester)
If you choose the "Offensive" side (Ethical Hacking), your day looks different:
Morning: You sign a contract with a client giving you permission to hack them. You spend hours researching their employees on LinkedIn and scanning their website for weak spots.
Afternoon: You try to break in. You might write a custom script to bypass their login screen.
End of Day: You write a very long report explaining exactly how you broke in and how they can fix it.
A Note for Rochester, MN
Since you are in Rochester, you are right next to the Mayo Clinic. Hospitals have massive cybersecurity teams to protect patient data. That is a great place to look for internships or shadowing opportunities in the future to see this routine in real life.
Good luck with your project!
Teklemuz Ayenew Tesfay
Electrical Engineer, Software Developer, and Career Mentor
517
Answers
Ethiopia
Updated
Teklemuz Ayenew’s Answer
Cybersecurity is a rewarding and exciting field with lots of opportunities. Each day is filled with important tasks that keep systems safe. Professionals start by checking security alerts and looking into anything unusual. They work with teams to fix any serious issues quickly. If there's a cyberattack, they act fast to stop it, clean up, and make sure everything is back to normal. They also work on making systems stronger by updating and protecting them against threats like malware and viruses.
Throughout the day, they improve security systems, automate tasks, and run tests to find any weak spots. They make sure backups are working and help employees understand security better. They stay updated on new threats, update policies, and work closely with IT teams. They also practice handling emergencies through drills. At the end of the day, they document everything and make sure the next team is ready to take over. This field is all about teamwork, quick thinking, and making a real difference in keeping information safe.
Throughout the day, they improve security systems, automate tasks, and run tests to find any weak spots. They make sure backups are working and help employees understand security better. They stay updated on new threats, update policies, and work closely with IT teams. They also practice handling emergencies through drills. At the end of the day, they document everything and make sure the next team is ready to take over. This field is all about teamwork, quick thinking, and making a real difference in keeping information safe.
Wes Sobbott
Cybersecurity
5
Answers
Cary, North Carolina
Updated
Wes’s Answer
One of the fun and interesting aspects of cyber security is that roles can be as varied as the legal field where they have everything from IP, Real Estate, Criminal, Probate lawyers, etc and Cyber has roles like Audit, Risk Management, Incident Response Commanders, Red Teamers, Penetration testers, Architects, etc. I would argue that the difference is that in cyber, although we have different roles, they are more interconnected. Even on a daily basis, we have feedback loops to drive improvement, and we have a united, single mission and purpose of protecting the enterprise and its people.
We would often start our day on an all hands, global call to discuss the latest risk landscape. We would also follow up this tailored update to communicate to all on any hot incidents, be aware of the likely and active vectors of attack, and prioritize remediation efforts.
For the rest of the day, as an executive, I would color code all meetings on my calendar to track time spent on different priorities. Some of the key areas were people - employees and peers, finance issues, active incidents, strategic programs and projects, and even revenue generating ideas for new products that we would build on the network. I would review my time at the end of the week and for the coming week to make sure that I was spending enough time on the right things. For me, I prioritized coaching and supporting team members and driving the strategic work that was transformative to improve our future overall security maturity as I felt these two areas had the most significant impact on my team's purpose and mission over the long term.
For employees, we would measure progress in these areas with employee surveys, all hands, HR metrics, and skips levels, and for the overall security program, we used the NIST CSF framework scoring system which a 3rd party would use to assess and measure our progress over a 2 year period.
Good luck on your future! I am a big believer in taking that first step and starting small, mastering your craft, and then moving on and up every 3 to 5 years. This is especially true in security as you can go so deep on all the various disciplines. If you go the leadership route, it helps to have a good understanding of all the disciplines to make the right people, process and financial decisions in line with the overall business direction and priorities.
We would often start our day on an all hands, global call to discuss the latest risk landscape. We would also follow up this tailored update to communicate to all on any hot incidents, be aware of the likely and active vectors of attack, and prioritize remediation efforts.
For the rest of the day, as an executive, I would color code all meetings on my calendar to track time spent on different priorities. Some of the key areas were people - employees and peers, finance issues, active incidents, strategic programs and projects, and even revenue generating ideas for new products that we would build on the network. I would review my time at the end of the week and for the coming week to make sure that I was spending enough time on the right things. For me, I prioritized coaching and supporting team members and driving the strategic work that was transformative to improve our future overall security maturity as I felt these two areas had the most significant impact on my team's purpose and mission over the long term.
For employees, we would measure progress in these areas with employee surveys, all hands, HR metrics, and skips levels, and for the overall security program, we used the NIST CSF framework scoring system which a 3rd party would use to assess and measure our progress over a 2 year period.
Good luck on your future! I am a big believer in taking that first step and starting small, mastering your craft, and then moving on and up every 3 to 5 years. This is especially true in security as you can go so deep on all the various disciplines. If you go the leadership route, it helps to have a good understanding of all the disciplines to make the right people, process and financial decisions in line with the overall business direction and priorities.
Noel Perreault
Cybersecurity
1
Answer
Cumberland, Rhode Island
Updated
Noel’s Answer
Cybersecurity is a vast field and thus has many different types of jobs for people of different interests and backgrounds. I work more on the governance side of cybersecurity which means I help to ensure the cybersecurity program we have implemented to keep our company safe is built in an efficient manner, keeping up with the expectations of the regulatory bodies, and well documented to ensure we can show we are doing everything we can to secure ourselves. A typical day might include looking through our cyber policies to help ensure they are relevant, reviewing unique business cases to ensure they comply with our policies, or working with cyber frameworks, such as NIST, to ensure our program is in line with industry standards.