How To Begin A Career In Cyber Security
Whether you’re a technical person, or a non-technical beginner, what’s always needed first, is a good strong foundation before you start building anything.
Education
You’ll need to start to build your foundation with industry-specific security certifications. You can view the Certifications page for a breakdown of where to begin, and what certifications interest you. There is no wrong choice here.
The Path for You
You can then begin to decide whether you want to pursue Information Security [InfoSec] or Cyber Security [CyberSec]. This all depends on what your interests are. You can view the InfoSec vs CyberSec page for more information.
Specializiation
As you begin to learn and understand the foundation of security, you may start to choose a specific interest. You can choose many career paths from the offensive or the defensive sides of security. Please read the page on Red, Blue, & Purple Teams to learn more.
Awareness
Security Awareness is something that is both foundational and ongoing. Awareness includes physical, hardware, software, and social awareness.
Social Networking OSI Model
Joe Hudson – Director of Growth, TCM Security
- Application: Look at your entire approach to networking, branding, and applying to jobs as a craft. Work on specific scenarios and questions, ask for help and advice, and then apply it all while monitoring the results and adjusting accordingly over time. Try everything multiple times. Continue to make more connections who might help you out.
- Presentation: Interviews. Reports. Briefings. Elevator pitches. Presentation skills might be the most important to your career, work on this craft, learn a skill involved, practice to a family member. Critical layer of the model.
- Session: Spend dedicated times each week (sessions) studying, working on your brand or profile/resume, making connections, applying to jobs. Track your results and determine which actions you can knock out most efficiently.
- Transport: Imagine yourself in the job. Find out what skills are needed to do that job and start working on those. Put yourself in those shoes and spend time doing the things you’d be doing in that job as best you can and have access to. No cash right now to buy equipment? See if someone will video chat with you while they do it and give advice.
- Network: This is different for everyone. LinkedIn, MeetUps, Conferences, Discord, Twitter, Comment on Posts, Text, Call (!), Send Memes. Figure out what you’re comfortable with and get after it.
- Data Link: Gather information on the market. Who’s hiring, who’s firing, who’s willing to help, who’s a waste of time. How much the jobs pay. What matters on a resume or profile. The ROI and feedback on a training program or cert. Harvest data.
- Physical: Get your hands on some hardware and software. Practice, tinker, explore.