Top 12 Network Security Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today’s twitchy threatscape, Network Security Analysts guard the gates and the plumbing behind them. The right mix of hands-on skills, sharp tooling instincts, and practical judgment turns a resume from noise into a signal hiring managers won’t ignore.

Network Security Analyst Skills

1. Wireshark
2. Nessus
3. Snort
4. Splunk
5. Palo Alto
6. Cisco ASA
7. FortiGate
8. Kali Linux
9. Nmap
10. OpenSSL
11. WireGuard
12. Check Point

1. Wireshark

Wireshark is a protocol analyzer that captures and dissects packets so you can see what’s truly happening on the wire and in the air. It turns vague hunches into concrete evidence.

Why It's Important

It enables deep traffic analysis for incident triage, threat hunting, and troubleshooting. When logs lie or stay silent, packets tell the truth.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

• Get fluent with display filters, color rules, and profiles. Speed matters when the clock is burning.
• Create or tweak dissectors with Lua to decode odd or proprietary protocols.
• Use ring buffers and capture filters (BPF) to trim noise before it hits disk.
• Export objects (HTTP/SMB/TLS secrets where appropriate) to validate data exfiltration or misuse.
• Correlate captures with IDS logs and PCAP-based platforms like Security Onion for context.
• Practice on real pcaps; build a personal corpus of known-good and known-bad traffic.
• Stay current with new versions to gain protocol updates and security fixes.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

2. Nessus

Nessus is a widely used vulnerability scanner that inventories, probes, and reports weaknesses across networks, systems, and applications.

Why It's Important

It drives continuous exposure management. You see what’s missing patches, what’s misconfigured, and what’s downright dangerous—before attackers do.

How to Improve Nessus Skills

1. Keep engines, plugins, and templates updated. New checks arrive fast.
2. Group assets and tailor policies per environment segment to reduce noise and sharpen findings.
3. Use authenticated scans to uncover real risk beyond perimeter banners.
4. Tune plugins and severities; validate and suppress recurring false positives with evidence.
5. Schedule scans thoughtfully (maintenance windows, deltas against baselines) and track trends.
6. Integrate with ticketing and SIEM to push remediation and measure MTTR.
7. Use scan comparisons to spot drift and new exposures after change events.

How to Display Nessus Skills on Your Resume

3. Snort

Snort is a network intrusion detection and prevention engine that inspects traffic with rules and preprocessors to flag or block malicious patterns.

Why It's Important

It delivers real-time visibility into attacks and policy violations at the packet level, crucial for detection depth and evidence fidelity.

How to Improve Snort Skills

1. Update rules frequently and align them to your environment; disable irrelevant signatures to save cycles.
2. Tune preprocessors (stream reassembly, normalization) for your protocols and throughput.
3. For Snort 3, enable multithreading and Hyperscan to scale on modern CPUs.
4. Use BPF capture filters to cut junk before inspection; reduce alert fatigue with thresholding and suppression.
5. Profile performance, measure packet drops, and fix hotspots iteratively.
6. Prefer modern outputs (JSON/syslog) into your log pipeline; legacy Unified2/Barnyard2 is effectively end-of-life.
7. Test with recorded pcaps and traffic replays to validate rules and capacity before production changes.
8. Participate in communities and training; rule writing is a craft, not a checkbox.

How to Display Snort Skills on Your Resume

4. Splunk

Splunk ingests, searches, and visualizes machine data at scale. For network defenders, it’s the investigation workbench and the alarm bell.

Why It's Important

It stitches together logs, flows, alerts, and context in near real time so analysts can detect, hunt, and respond without guesswork.

How to Improve Splunk Skills

1. Onboard data cleanly: normalize to common models, tag consistently, and set sane index/retention strategy.
2. Write efficient SPL; use tstats, datamodel acceleration, lookups, and macros to keep searches fast.
3. Build focused dashboards for triage and deep dives; avoid kitchen-sink panels.
4. Implement meaningful alerts with risk-based logic to cut noise and highlight true impact.
5. Keep apps and core updated; maintain knowledge objects, roles, and RBAC hygiene.
6. Leverage Enterprise Security (if available) and custom correlation searches tuned to your environment.
7. Automate enrichment and response where safe; document runbooks right in the app.

How to Display Splunk Skills on Your Resume

5. Palo Alto

Palo Alto Networks delivers next-generation firewalls and cloud security platforms used to secure applications, data, and users across campus, data center, and SASE footprints.

Why It's Important

Its App-ID, User-ID, content updates, threat intel, and automation features give analysts precise control and clear visibility across noisy networks.

How to Improve Palo Alto Skills

1. Pursue certifications like PCCET, PCNSA, and PCNSE to anchor hands-on practice with structure.
2. Use Security Profiles (Threat, URL, DNS, WildFire) everywhere appropriate; tune, don’t just enable.
3. Adopt decryption policies thoughtfully to expose threats hiding in TLS while respecting privacy and compliance.
4. Apply rulebase hygiene: application-based policies, service objects, hit counts for cleanup, logging at session end.
5. Centralize with Panorama when you have many firewalls; standardize device groups and templates.
6. Back up configs and use candidate configs/commit validation to reduce change risk.
7. Automate routine tasks with the PAN-OS API or Ansible; feed logs to analytics platforms for detection lift.

How to Display Palo Alto Skills on Your Resume

6. Cisco ASA

Cisco ASA is a long-standing security appliance platform providing firewalling, VPN, and related protections. Many environments still rely on it, even as newer Secure Firewall/FTD options grow.

Why It's Important

It remains a core perimeter and remote-access workhorse in countless networks, so analysts must know how to keep it tight, fast, and auditable.

How to Improve Cisco ASA Skills

1. Keep firmware current to close vulnerabilities and gain stability improvements.
2. Design precise ACLs with object groups; use the Modular Policy Framework for inspection and QoS where needed.
3. Turn on and tune threat detection; log to a central SIEM with the right facilities and severities.
4. Harden management: SSH/HTTPS only, limited source IPs, AAA for admin access, and strong crypto.
5. Use IKEv2 and modern suites (AES-GCM, strong DH groups) for site-to-site and remote-access VPNs.
6. Review policies regularly; remove dead rules and unused objects to simplify and speed up processing.
7. Back up configs, test changes in a lab when possible, and document standard builds.

How to Display Cisco ASA Skills on Your Resume

7. FortiGate

FortiGate appliances deliver consolidated security (NGFW, IPS, web filtering, SSL inspection, SD-WAN, and more) under FortiOS, with tight integration across the broader Security Fabric.

Why It's Important

High performance, broad feature coverage, and strong logging/analytics make it a versatile shield for branch, campus, and data center networks.

How to Improve FortiGate Skills

1. Track recommended upgrade paths and keep FortiGuard updates on a frequent schedule.
2. Tune Security Profiles (AV, IPS, Web, Application, DNS) with sensible exceptions and categories.
3. Enable SSL inspection where justified to reveal encrypted threats; manage certificates carefully.
4. Leverage SD-WAN for resilient, cost-savvy routing; measure and steer by performance SLAs.
5. Use VDOMs and zones to segment; tighten inter-zone policies and log everything meaningful.
6. Integrate with FortiAnalyzer/FortiManager for centralized analytics, reports, and change control.
7. Automate with Security Fabric connectors and automation stitches to speed response.
8. Deploy HA pairs, test failover, and confirm session pickup for critical paths.
9. Profile hardware offload and NP acceleration; pick flow vs proxy mode deliberately.

How to Display FortiGate Skills on Your Resume

8. Kali Linux

Kali Linux is a Debian-based distro focused on penetration testing and forensics, bundling hundreds of offensive and diagnostic tools.

Why It's Important

It equips analysts to validate defenses, reproduce attacker tradecraft, and probe weaknesses responsibly and thoroughly.

How to Improve Kali Linux Skills

1. Update often to get new tools and patches: sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade.
2. Operate with least privilege; use sudo, not root-as-default, for day-to-day work.
3. Enable a firewall and prune services: sudo apt install ufw; sudo ufw enable.
4. Harden remote access with strong passwords and SSH keys; restrict who can log in.
5. Add Fail2Ban and sensible jail rules to slow brute-force attempts.
6. Encrypt disks, snapshot VMs, and back up loot and notes regularly.
7. Keep your toolkit lean. Install what you need, remove what you don’t, and pin versions for repeatability.
8. Isolate tests with containers or VMs; consider dedicated lab networks and proxychains for traffic control.
9. Audit with tools like Lynis; monitor traffic with Wireshark or tcpdump during engagements.
10. Stay sharp with CTFs and labs; always operate with written authorization.

How to Display Kali Linux Skills on Your Resume

9. Nmap

Nmap is the go-to network mapper and scanner for discovering hosts, services, and exposure across IP space.

Why It's Important

It rapidly outlines the attack surface, verifies firewall behavior, and feeds deeper testing with hard evidence.

How to Improve Nmap Skills

1. Go beyond simple port scans: version detection (-sV), OS detection (-O), and targeted scripts (--script).
2. Use the Nmap Scripting Engine to check vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and policy drift.
3. Tune timing (-T0..5) and probe rates for stealth or speed as the situation demands.
4. Apply evasion when appropriate (decoys, source ports, packet fragmentation) within legal bounds.
5. Automate scans with shell/Python and diff results over time to catch changes quickly.
6. Pair with ndiff or your own comparisons to spotlight new services or ports after deployments.
7. Use Zenmap or other visualization when sharing results with non-experts.

How to Display Nmap Skills on Your Resume

10. OpenSSL

OpenSSL provides the cryptographic building blocks and TLS plumbing that secure data in transit across countless systems.

Why It's Important

Done right, it gives confidentiality, integrity, and modern protocol support. Done wrong, it leaves cracks big enough to drive exploits through.

How to Improve OpenSSL Skills

1. Run supported branches and patch promptly.
2. Enforce TLS 1.2 and 1.3; disable SSLv3/TLS 1.0/1.1 and weak ciphers/curves.
3. Prefer ECDHE with AEAD suites (AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305) and strong curves.
4. Issue certificates with modern choices: RSA 3072+ or ECDSA P-256/384; include SANs correctly.
5. Enable OCSP stapling and consider HSTS at the web tier (where applicable).
6. Tune session resumption, ticket lifetimes, and buffer settings for performance.
7. If required by policy, enable FIPS mode and validate with approved providers.
8. Protect private keys (permissions, HSM where appropriate); rotate on schedule and after incidents.
9. Continuously test with scanners and track relevant CVEs to close gaps early.

How to Display OpenSSL Skills on Your Resume

11. WireGuard

WireGuard is a lean, fast VPN protocol built on modern cryptography. Minimal surface area, serious speed.

Why It's Important

It provides secure tunnels with far less complexity than many legacy VPN stacks, which means fewer misconfigurations and smoother performance.

How to Improve WireGuard Skills

1. Keep endpoints updated; kernel and tools evolve quickly.
2. Constrain AllowedIPs tightly to least privilege; avoid wide, sloppy routes.
3. Rotate keys on a schedule; consider preshared keys for an extra layer when warranted.
4. Lock down the UDP port with strict firewall rules; stop traffic leaks with fwmark/nftables killswitches.
5. Use split tunneling intentionally and document why; prefer minimal routes.
6. Support IPv6, DNS leak protection, and per-peer rate limits where feasible.
7. Log responsibly (not the secrets) and baseline normal handshake behavior to spot anomalies.
8. At scale, use a controller or control-plane solution to manage peers, posture, and provisioning.

How to Display WireGuard Skills on Your Resume

12. Check Point

Check Point offers a comprehensive security stack—next-gen firewalls, advanced threat prevention, segmentation, and centralized management—deployed from branch to cloud.

Why It's Important

It brings layered prevention, rich logging, and strong policy control that analysts can shape to the environment and its risks.

How to Improve Check Point Skills

1. Stay on a current recommended maintrain release with up-to-date Jumbo Hotfixes.
2. Design policy layers and inline layers for clarity; use updatable objects and applications to reduce churn.
3. Tune Threat Prevention (IPS, Anti-Bot, AV, Threat Emulation/Extraction) and move from detect to prevent with confidence.
4. Deploy HTTPS inspection with clear exceptions and certificate governance.
5. Harden gateways and management: least privilege admins, granular roles, and change approval.
6. Use SmartEvent for correlation and reporting; track rule hit counts and retire the stale stuff.
7. Leverage acceleration (SecureXL/Accel) and performance tuning to keep latency down.
8. Automate with the Management API; back up management and gateways regularly and test restores.
9. Segment networks with sensible zones and enforce identity awareness for user-based controls.

How to Display Check Point Skills on Your Resume