A Malware Analyst works in the field of computer and Network Security to examine, identify, and understand the nature of cyber-threats such as worms, viruses, rootkits, bots and Trojan horses.  All of these types of programs represent malicious code that can infect systems and cause them to behave in unexpected ways. Malware can compromise both the software and hardware integrity of a computer or network as well as steal proprietary data such as a company’s financial records. Because malicious code comes in many different forms, a Malware Analyst must be thoroughly conversant with both interpreted and compiled programming languages and must possess a keen understanding of both reverse-engineering and software development.