Top 12 Security Technician Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the rapidly evolving field of cybersecurity, a well-crafted resume is crucial for security technicians aiming to stand out in the job market. Highlighting a robust mix of technical and soft skills can tilt the odds in your favor, signaling you’re ready to handle today’s security chaos with steady hands and sharp tools.
Security Technician Skills
1. CyberArk
CyberArk focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), delivering controls to protect, manage, and monitor privileged credentials and secrets across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. It helps safeguard critical assets and meet compliance expectations.
Why It's Important
CyberArk matters because privileged accounts are prime targets. Rotating, vaulting, and monitoring those credentials slashes risk and tightens control where it counts most.
How to Improve CyberArk Skills
Practical moves that lift your CyberArk game:
Stay current: Keep the platform, components, and connectors updated to get new protections and fixes.
Harden configurations: Align policies to least privilege, enforce password rotation, and clean up stale safes and accounts.
Enforce MFA: Require strong, multi-factor authentication for all privileged access paths.
Audit relentlessly: Review access, recordings, and policy exceptions. Close gaps quickly.
Invest in training: Educate admins and users. Better habits mean fewer messes.
Use integrations: Connect CyberArk with ticketing, SIEM, and identity platforms to streamline workflows and alerts.
These steps drive real gains in both security and efficiency.
How to Display CyberArk Skills on Your Resume
2. Nessus
Nessus is a widely used vulnerability scanner built to spot misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and risky exposures across systems and networks.
Why It's Important
It helps you find what’s weak before attackers do. Clear visibility. Risk-based prioritization. Faster remediation. Less guesswork.
How to Improve Nessus Skills
Make scans count:
Update often: Keep the engine and plugins fresh for the latest checks.
Tune policies: Customize scan templates for your environment and asset types.
Use credentials: Authenticated scans dig deeper and cut false positives.
Balance performance: Schedule thoughtfully and throttle where needed to avoid network strain.
Deploy agents: Reach transient, remote, or off-network devices without noisy network sweeps.
Review and rank: Prioritize by exploitability and business impact, not just CVSS.
Integrate: Feed findings into ticketing, SIEM, and patch tools to close the loop.
Keep learning: Track new plugins, scanning techniques, and emerging threats.
Done right, Nessus becomes a dependable radar rather than a floodlight.
How to Display Nessus Skills on Your Resume
3. Splunk
Splunk is a platform for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine data at scale. For security teams, it powers real-time detection, investigation, and response. Note: Splunk is now part of Cisco.
Why It's Important
It pulls signals from noisy logs and turns them into actionable insights. Fast pivoting, wide data coverage, and flexible analytics—useful in the heat of an incident.
How to Improve Splunk Skills
Sharper, faster, cleaner:
Optimize searches: Write efficient SPL, reduce wildcards, and use lookups to speed queries.
Adopt data models: Normalize and accelerate common security use cases for consistent results.
Use security apps: Leverage use-case content and fine-tuned dashboards to jumpstart detection.
Stay updated: Keep core, forwarders, and add-ons aligned and patched.
Build targeted alerts: Trigger on behavior and deviations, not just static rules.
Deepen SPL: Master eval, stats, tstats, transaction, and regex for richer analytics.
Collaborate: Share knowledge packs, macros, and dashboards across the team.
Train and certify: Formal learning pays off in speed and repeatability.
Every second saved during triage matters. Make the platform work for you, not the other way around.
How to Display Splunk Skills on Your Resume
4. Wireshark
Wireshark is an open-source network protocol analyzer. It captures packets and lets you dissect traffic in detail for troubleshooting, threat hunting, and protocol analysis.
Why It's Important
When logs lie or hide the truth, the wire doesn’t. Packet-level visibility reveals misconfigurations, malicious flows, and protocol breakage with surgical precision.
How to Improve Wireshark Skills
Make packets tell their story:
Own the basics: TCP/IP, TLS handshakes, DNS behavior, HTTP semantics—know the patterns.
Master filters: Craft display and capture filters to isolate the signal in seconds.
Use profiles: Create custom layouts, columns, and color rules that fit your workflows.
Follow streams: Reconstruct conversations, decrypt where appropriate, and chase anomalies end to end.
Practice: Analyze real captures, lab traffic, and CTF-style datasets to build intuition.
Automate: Script with tshark or Lua for repeatable parsing and quick triage.
Stay current: Protocols evolve. So should your dissector knowledge and heuristics.
Engage peers: Discuss tricky traces and edge cases with your team to sharpen instincts.
With repetition, patterns jump out. That’s when analysis gets fast—and fun.
How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume
5. Palo Alto
Palo Alto Networks provides next-generation firewalls and cloud security services that defend applications, users, and data across hybrid environments.
Why It's Important
It brings threat prevention, application-aware controls, and centralized visibility under one roof. Strong policy. Clear telemetry. Consistent enforcement.
How to Improve Palo Alto Skills
Turn the platform into a force multiplier:
Update diligently: Keep PAN-OS, content updates, and signatures current.
Harden configurations: Apply best-practice baselines, reduce overly broad rules, and enable logging everywhere it matters.
Enable Threat Prevention: IPS, anti-malware, anti-spyware, and sandboxing—turned on and tuned.
Secure remote access: Use Prisma Access or VPN with strong crypto and MFA for distributed workforces.
Advanced URL filtering: Block risky categories, inspect inline, and enforce safe browsing.
Use Panorama: Centralize policy, templates, and reporting for scale and consistency.
Upskill regularly: Train operators and review new features after each major release.
Join community discussions: Share runbooks and tuning tips; learn from real-world deployments.
Small configuration tweaks often deliver outsized risk reduction.
How to Display Palo Alto Skills on Your Resume
6. CISSP
CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) is a globally recognized certification validating expertise in designing, implementing, and managing a robust cybersecurity program.
Why It's Important
For a Security Technician, CISSP signals wide-ranging knowledge, credibility with stakeholders, and commitment to continuous learning. It can open doors and raise the ceiling for growth.
How to Improve CISSP Skills
Build depth and stay fresh:
Study continuously: Use reputable training resources and structured curricula.
Take practice exams: Calibrate timing and identify weak domains early.
Join study groups: Learn by teaching, debate tricky topics, and share memory aids.
Use official material: Anchor your prep in current exam outlines and guides.
Get hands-on: Lab environments and real incidents cement abstract concepts.
Attend webinars: Track emerging threats and control frameworks.
Follow security news: Case studies keep theory grounded.
Review the CBK: Know the domains, the core principles, and how they connect.
Consistency beats cramming. Make it a habit, not a sprint.
How to Display CISSP Skills on Your Resume
7. SSCP
SSCP (Systems Security Certified Practitioner) validates hands-on skills for implementing, monitoring, and administering secure IT infrastructure aligned to policy.
Why It's Important
It proves operational security know-how: access controls, incident response, monitoring, and basic architecture. Solid ground for day-to-day defense.
How to Improve SSCP Skills
Level up with focused habits:
Know the domains: Map your strengths and gaps across all seven.
Use official study guides: Keep prep aligned with the latest exam blueprint.
Practice exams: Reinforce recall, refine pacing, and validate readiness.
Build a home lab: Practice hardening, monitoring, and incident workflows.
Join communities: Discuss troubleshooting tactics and exam strategies.
Track trends: New attack patterns mean new defensive playbooks.
Follow the Code of Ethics: Professional conduct is non-negotiable.
Schedule the exam: Set a date, build a plan, and execute.
Real practice plus disciplined study delivers results.
How to Display SSCP Skills on Your Resume
8. Kali Linux
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution tailored for penetration testing and forensics, packed with tools for recon, exploitation, and post-exploitation.
Why It's Important
It’s a ready-made toolkit for finding and validating weaknesses, then documenting paths to remediation.
How to Improve Kali Linux Skills
Sharpen the edge and keep it safe:
Update regularly:
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgradekeeps tools and OS current.Harden the host: Configure firewall rules, lock down services, and reduce attack surface.
Encrypt sensitive data: Use GPG for files and full-disk encryption for laptops or field kits.
Trim the toolset: Install what you need, remove what you don’t. Faster, cleaner, safer.
Secure the network: Route traffic through a VPN when appropriate; inspect with Wireshark as needed.
Back up often: Use rsync or snapshot tools so experiments aren’t irreversible.
Use anonymity tooling carefully: Tor and proxychains have a place—understand trade-offs and legality.
Engage the community: Share tips, troubleshoot odd errors, compare methodologies.
Train continuously: Practice on labs and CTFs; read the docs; iterate.
Discipline turns a sprawling toolkit into a precise instrument.
How to Display Kali Linux Skills on Your Resume
9. Metasploit
Metasploit is a framework for developing, testing, and executing exploits, commonly used in penetration testing to validate and demonstrate risk.
Why It's Important
It simulates real attacker behavior, helping you confirm exposure paths and prove impact—so fixes get prioritized.
How to Improve Metasploit Skills
Keep it sharp and swift:
Update often: Pull new modules and fixes. Use
msfupdateor your package manager.Contribute modules: Writing or tuning modules deepens mastery and helps the community.
Tune performance: Adjust concurrency, payload options, and database settings for smoother runs.
Practice OPSEC: Control exposure, isolate labs, and log actions carefully.
Study post-exploitation: Pivoting, persistence, and data exfiltration techniques matter as much as initial access.
Track vulnerabilities: Monitor new CVEs and exploit techniques to stay relevant.
Ethical use, crisp methodology, and detailed reporting set professionals apart.
How to Display Metasploit Skills on Your Resume
10. Snort
Snort is an open-source network intrusion detection and prevention system that inspects traffic and flags (or blocks) suspicious activity.
Why It's Important
It’s a battle-tested IDS/IPS with strong rule coverage and broad community support—ideal for real-time detection across diverse environments.
How to Improve Snort Skills
From noisy to insightful:
Customize snort.conf: Set HOME_NET and EXTERNAL_NET correctly and enable only needed preprocessors.
Manage rules smartly: Keep rules updated, retire noisy ones, and write custom rules for local threats.
Tune performance: Optimize preprocessors (e.g., stream, HTTP), size buffers sanely, and consider offloading with Barnyard2.
Integrate with SIEM: Centralize alerts, enrich with context, and tighten response workflows.
Use advanced preprocessors: Reputation, sensitive data, and normalization can lift detection quality.
Keep learning: Review rule logic, attend workshops, and compare detections against real traffic captures.
The goal: high-fidelity alerts and fewer distractions.
How to Display Snort Skills on Your Resume
11. FortiGate
FortiGate devices bundle next-gen firewalling, VPN, IPS, anti-malware, and advanced threat protection to secure networks end to end.
Why It's Important
One platform, many controls. Strong prevention, smart segmentation, and centralized management that scales.
How to Improve FortiGate Skills
Dial in protection and performance:
Upgrade firmware: Apply stable releases to gain new features and security fixes.
Enable FortiGuard services: Keep IPS, web filtering, and AV signatures updated and tuned.
Prioritize resources: Adjust policies and inspection levels to protect critical apps without bottlenecks.
Harden VPN access: Use strong ciphers, MFA, and split tunneling policies with care.
Audit configurations: Review rules, objects, and logs regularly; remove cruft.
Segment wisely: Use VLANs and VDOMs to limit blast radius and simplify policy.
Back up configs: Automate backups and test restores.
Leverage FortiAnalyzer: Centralize logging, analytics, and reporting for better detection.
Train staff: Keep operators fluent in new features and response runbooks.
Use vendor support: Health checks and best practices accelerate maturity.
Security improves when visibility and hygiene keep pace with features.
How to Display FortiGate Skills on Your Resume
12. RSA Archer
Archer (formerly RSA Archer) is a risk and compliance platform used to identify, assess, manage, and track organizational risk, incidents, and controls across complex environments.
Why It's Important
It centralizes risk, compliance, and policy workflows, giving security teams a single source of truth and a clear path from issue to resolution.
How to Improve RSA Archer Skills
Make the program hum:
Streamline data feeds: Standardize sources, reduce duplication, and validate data quality.
Tailor workflows: Mirror real processes, automate handoffs, and remove manual choke points.
Apply RBAC: Grant least-privilege access to improve security and usability.
Train and iterate: Brief stakeholders on new features and capture feedback for quick wins.
Monitor performance: Watch job queues, report loads, and database health; tune as needed.
Close the loop: Align findings, remediation, and metrics so leaders see progress, not just problems.
Patch regularly: Apply updates to maintain security and stability.
Good data and clean process design make risk programs stick.
How to Display RSA Archer Skills on Your Resume
