Hire Security Analysts

Why Hiring Security Analysts Requires More Than Certification Checks

Cybersecurity hiring is broken in a specific way: the industry over-indexes on certifications and under-invests in evaluating practical skill. A candidate with a CISSP, Security+, and a polished resume might look perfect on paper but freeze during a real incident, misconfigure a SIEM rule that floods the team with false positives, or fail to recognize a genuine threat buried in log noise. The gap between certification knowledge and operational effectiveness is wider in security than almost any other IT discipline.

The stakes are also uniquely high. A weak hire in security does not just slow down your team — it creates blind spots that attackers exploit. Organizations need analysts who can triage alerts efficiently, investigate suspicious activity methodically, escalate appropriately, and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders under time pressure.

Exodata's technical team evaluates security analyst candidates through scenario-based assessments that simulate real-world conditions. We test how candidates investigate alerts, correlate events across log sources, apply threat intelligence, and make decisions when information is incomplete. You get analysts who can defend your environment from day one, not just pass a multiple-choice exam.

What Our Engineers Assess

Every security analyst candidate goes through a live technical assessment with our engineering team. Here's what we evaluate:

• SIEM proficiency — writing detection rules, tuning alert thresholds, correlating events across data sources, and reducing false positive rates
• Incident response — triage methodology, containment strategies, evidence preservation, root cause analysis, and post-incident reporting
• Threat analysis — understanding MITRE ATT&CK framework, recognizing attacker TTPs, and applying threat intelligence to detection engineering
• Log analysis and forensics — parsing system logs, network traffic analysis, endpoint telemetry interpretation, and timeline reconstruction
• Compliance and governance — familiarity with SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, NIST frameworks, and translating compliance requirements into security controls
• Vulnerability management — scanning tools, risk-based prioritization, remediation tracking, and communicating risk to stakeholders

Common Tech Stacks We Vet For

Engagement Options