Security Engineer vs. Software Engineer
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Introduction
With the world of technology evolving so quickly, a lot of career paths are born with it.
Computer science professionals have a multitude of career options to choose from, from software design/development to information security, the career landscape is vast and varied. Two of the fastest expanding tech career paths are cybersecurity and software development, both offering excellent growth potential.
Broadly speaking, cybersecurity professionals are focused on securing the application/software/systems, either with defensive or offensive techniques and methodologies. Software engineers are about creating applications/software.
Since cybersecurity and software development have a lot of different career paths, we are going to focus on two career paths, Software Engineer and Security Engineer, which are the most prevalent ones.
There are a lot of differences between the two paths and we are going to explore their differences in this article.
Software Engineers
You may know them as programmers or developers, Software Engineers are computer science professionals who use engineering principles and programming languages to build, maintain, test, and evaluate the software for computers and applications. They use a variety of programming languages such as JavaScript, C ++, Java, Python, and many more to write their code in order to build their applications.
Some of them design the software to perform specific tasks or integrate features, while others ensure that the total functionality between the services works optimally.
Their domain of expertise is about the effectiveness of the software and how to maintain that.
Software engineering job titles include:
- Software Engineers
- Software Architects
- Data Scientists
- Game Developers
- Quality Assurance Testers
- DevOps Engineers
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Security Engineers
Security engineers develop, plan, and execute security measures designed to protect the web application or organization’s network and computers from malware or threat actors.
They also create new ways of improving the network security protocols or the security of the web application by applying offensive techniques to ensure the security of the web app/network.
They are divided into 2 teams, Red Team and Blue Team.
Blue teams consist of security professionals who have an inside-out view of the organization or web app. Their task is mainly to protect the organization/web app’s critical assets against any kind of threat.
Red teams are offensive security professionals who attack the systems in order to break the defenses.
Red Team consists of security professionals who act as thread actors to overcome the security protocols that the Blue team set up. These teams often consist of independent ethical hackers who evaluate the system’s security in an objective matter.
Red teams often simulate real attacks against the blue teams to test the effectiveness of the network/web app security that was set by the Blue Team.
Communication between the two teams is the most important factor in providing complete defensive coverage of the organization or web app.
Security engineering job titles include:
- Offensive Security Engineer – Pentester – Ethical Hacker
- Cyber Security Analyst
- Cyber Security Architect
- Cyber Security Consultant
- Cyber Security Engineer
- Cyber Threat Analyst
What software engineers and security engineers have different.
Both software engineers and security engineers design and develop software, but security engineers focus on the security aspects of the application or the security of the network.
Their main difference though comes in the mindset of the two.
The mindset of the software engineer is to find various ways to make software work correctly and efficiently. Security engineers’ mindset is to find ways to secure the application (for Blue teamers) or to find ways to break/break in the application (for Red teamers).
Also, security engineers do not require to learn any programming, but if they do, it’s a major advantage to them.
Another difference is in their workflow.
A developer has a more structured workflow because it’s easier to know if the software works or not. A security engineer solves problems or builds solutions in a more obscure manner, in the sense that there is less of a definitive correct answer. An example could be to improve an input validation in the backend, which could be done in many ways, in terms of what libraries are used or even creating custom libraries for the input validation, or when you perform penetration testing/bug bounty, and the results often include a lot of false-positives which need manual testing to confirm, etc.
Security not a priority for Software Engineers
A recent study (Software Security during Modern Code Review: The Developer’s Perspective), published in August 2022, by Larissa Braz, and Alberto Bacchelli, found that while many of the participants in the study develop security-sensitive software systems, security is still not a priority during code review.
Alberto Bacchelli in his own words, “developers may disregard security aspects during reviews due to their assumptions about the security dynamic of the application they develop while recognizing the high importance of ensuring software security during code review”, “on the other hand, they struggle to do so due to lack of proper security training and knowledge.”
While code review, on its own, is not enough for detecting security vulnerabilities, software engineers need to be well-trained and be careful while spreading awareness around security assumptions, such as believing that security is a responsibility of another application or team.
In the end, a code review that combines automated tools and a well-trained security-wise software engineer can deliver a more secure web application.
When software engineers and security engineers come together
While they spent their time on types of work that may be different, they can both improve their quality of work by understanding each other’s type of work, as the type of work and the domain-specific knowledge can help towards their goal, to build an effective and secure system or software.
For a software engineer who understands the security measures needed to be in place by being aware of common security vulnerabilities, thus writing a more secure software code.
For a security engineer who is well aware of how a software engineer writes software code, it’s much easier for him to identify how it behaves and thus its vulnerabilities as well.
Which one will be more in demand in the future?
Both careers will be likely in demand for years to come. As more aspects of our lives become digital, Cyber Security and Web Development are going to be essential.
However, the Cyber Security industry offers better chances to get hired in the future as more security audits are becoming mandatory, and considerably fewer people choose the security engineer career path since web development is a more prevalent career path.
Information Security can hardly keep up with the number of vulnerabilities found daily, making information security engineers’ role a vital one in today’s tech world.
On the other hand, software engineering will continue to be in high demand in the future as tech companies require them to maintain or update their software continuously, making them a crucial element in the industry.
Why are both valuable
Both careers are very important and necessary for a successful product, security engineers tend to have a chaotic workflow whereas software developers have a more structured one, but in the end, they should both be integrated into a framework for the best outcome, even if it’s a software or a system’s network.
The framework should be built in a way that maintains an environment in which both can work, communicate, and learn from each other for your product to be the best it can be.
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