The world of Infosec "No sugar coating it!"

Getting started - if you could hire me that would be great!

So let’s be honest, getting started is a bit of misnomer. why is that you ask well everyone wants to go directly into infosec and while that might be awesome and trust me its a great feeling when you finally “Make it!” but really if you want to do well in information security you have to be in love with the field otherwise you’ll just end up burnt out! joining the " I hate my job group."

I absolutely love infosec, I love that it is never the same each day has something new to offer, something new to learn but that being said you are always learning! - “The Day I stop learning is the day I die.” - @hacker1db

So what do you need to know:

So I could tell you that getting a degree and a cert will make you hireable but three main ingredients in getting started in Infosec:

  • College/schooling
  • Certs
  • experience

I can’t tell you how much experience is a must, all the certs and schooling will be the same as doing hands-on work! Experience is probably the hardest thing for most people to get so let me give some insights from life. We have all started from somewhere, so ask lots of questions but I mean if you don’t know start with a simple google search before you ask someone else.

  1. this helps you learn to find what you’re looking for on the internet.
  2. You will most likely find it on the internet. but if you don’t at least when you got to ask someone you might have learned something ahead of time that will help you ask better questions. I find that doing this before I ask someone helps me to ask more accurate questions. Back to getting experience the best thing that I found is volunteering - yes I know it’s not paid but if don’t put in the work you probably succeed in this industry. But it really is the best way to get experience internships/volunteering most local colleges, non-profits, and even some high school may let you come and just fix computers and learn from someone it is really either that or you start at a helpdesk somewhere and work your way up from there.

The goal of having you start at a helpdesk level is that you learn a lot about how things fundamentally work and without a foundation, you have nothing to build on.

  • you will learn how to talk to non-technical people - “soft skills”
  • you will learn how to handle different types of tasks as they are thrown at you.
  • you will learn multiple different technology stacks - Active directory, Firewall’s, routing and switching, common issues with different os types.
  • Gives you a platform to ask questions in person, this is super helpful when you are starting out.

I can hear it now - “But I am already in I.T”

Now if you are already in an I.T job which is where I found myself before I made the jump.

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