A Security Engineer is NOT a Security Analyst

Security engineers and security analysts can sometimes have very similar duties and their responsibilities can often (and do often) overlap. While subject matter experts have pretty distinct views on the two roles and a good detailed list of their contrasting features, hiring managers and human resource departments offtimes don’t. One quick job search can result in many “Security Analyst/Security Engineer” available positions with job descriptions that can not justify their poor choice of words and confusion of the two positions.

A security engineer is an experts who takes on himself the hands-on duties of building, implementing, deploying, and maintaining cyber security solutions for a certain organization; solutions such firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, honeypots, and security software. It is only after the engineer is done with his duties that an analyst will take on his. Given that these security controls are in place and functional, it is up to the cyber security analyst to test their practical effectiveness and ability to repel real world attacks. In simple terms, while security engineers build security systems and sustain them, it is the duty of a security analyst to periodically test the efficiency of these systems and to give feedback on their performance.