There are at times, I often reflect on my own life, and try
to figure out what I can have done better, not just from a personal standpoint,
but from a professional one as well. I
am happy where I am in Cyber now, but I keep wondering is there a different
path in high school and college that I could have taken which would have
allowed me to get where I am at now quicker.
One of the biggest obstacles I had back then was a phobia of
learning programming. I tried it in high
school and even in college, but I simply could not grasp the skills and the mindset
that were needed. Funny to say, the first
job I took right after finishing my MBA was being a COBOL programmer. Luckily, they had a training period for it,
but I did not do very well in that either.
So after I took stock of all my computer experiences from
high school up until that first job, I realized that OK, I am not a programmer,
but I was good at understanding and working on the application side of computers
and technology.
So that is why you see me today as a tech writer and not a practitioner
of a particular Cyber field, such as Penetration Testing or Threat Hunting.
So, this brings up the next question: How does one get started in a career in
Cybersecurity? Well, if you are still in
high school or college, the answer seems to be fairly straightforward: Try to become a technology major, or better
yet, try to become a Cybersecurity major.
Many colleges and universities are now offering undergraduate
and even graduate degrees both on campus and online. This will give the bulk of the preparation that
you will need to start that first job in Cyber.
But if you are amid-career person and are looking at
transitioning over to Cyber, the path to where you want to go could be even
murkier. But to help you get yourself aligned,
here are some tips you can follow:
1)
Try to work with people:
By this I mean try to work in a
place where you can help people with their computer problems. The ideal situation here would be to work in
a help desk like environment for a couple of years. But if you are in a whole different career
line, this may or not be feasible. Other
possible solutions here would be to work for a local computer store in your
neighborhood where you have that customer facing interaction, or even any other
kind of technology store. A great example
of this is the “You Break It We Fix It” franchise. You bring in any technology equipment that is
need of repair, and either it is done on the spot or it is shipped to somewhere
else where the parts are available. Even
when I was doing my MBA, I held a full-time job as a sales consultant for the University
Computer Services where I was interfacing with tech customers directly. That is one of the best venues where I
learned about computers, and that experience has even carried with me on today. Having this kind of entry level experience
will also teach you great communications skills, which is so needed in the Cyber
world today.
2)
On the job training:
I often get asked the question, “Where did you get your Cyber education
from?” Truth be told, I don’t have any
formal training in the field. I ended up
teaching myself everything. It’s not
that I picked up a book and started reading Cyber, it’s in the line of work
that I am in. Writing about this stuff
day in and day out year after year, you tend to learn quite a bit over the long
haul. As my dad would always say, the best
teacher is often just you. If you are
starting a new career in Cyber, make sure that you do get that on-the-job training. At the present time, many recruiting managers
are only hiring workers that fit the mold. But they are now starting to realize
that in order to help fill the Cyber worker shortage, they need to break away from
this trend. So many of these companies
are now offering on the job training in lieu having specific Cyber
experience. Make sure again that you are
going to be offered this before you start working, just to make sure that everybody
is on the same page.
3)
Some
skills can be taught:
For some areas of Cybersecurity, baseline
skills can often be self-taught, which will be an added bonus when you start
your first job. A typical example of
this once again Pen Testing. There are
many free tools that are available online that you can download and start to
experiment with. But be careful
about where you download stuff at!!! Kali
Linux is also another good example of this.
It also comes a free download, and this is the tool of choice for many
Pen Testers for real world scenarios.
There are also plenty of other training videos that are available for
free such as Professor Messer’s online training for the Security+ cert.
4)
If needed, get the appropriate cert:
I am very cautious about this one. There are so many Cyber certs out there, it
is almost impossible to know to even where to get started from. Also, I think a lot of these are simply money
racket schemes. But they are some good
ones out there, such as from CompTIA and ISC2. They both offer entry level
certs into Cybersecurity, and in fact, I am going to take the one from ISC2
very shortly. It is a new one that came
out in September. Once you have this
baseline cert, then you can decide if you need more down the road, depending upon
what area in Cyber you eventually land in.
Heck, it could even be the case that you many not need any certs at
all. There are some Cyber professionals that
I know of out there who have no certs and are quite successful. Keep in mind that a cert is only a steppingstone
to something else, and nothing more than that.
My Thoughts On This:
IMHO, I think anybody from any walk of life could potentially
get a job in Cyber, even if you don’t have much experience. It all takes a persistency and a willingness
to learn. So whatever skills you do have,
try package them so that you can show case these two items. That will carry far more weight in gold than
all of the certs in this entire world.
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