Looking to get in the tech industry, interested in Cyber security as it as hot topic these days but how do I go about this?

[Orion85]

I earnt my first wings by learning the ins and out of building my first PC ( thank you you tube and linus tech tips big inspiration ) specked it 10 times and built it in a month last year and my interest in PC tech, advances and threats have sky rocketed since then. 

 

I'm learning Python in my spare time to get a computer language under my belt but where do I go from here. 

 

Also I know AI, deep learning and machine learning will take over many tech jobs so what jobs will be left for us in the near future and how do I go about getting them?

 

Anyone with knowledge, experience and advice I'm all ears.

 

Orion

[Crunchy Dragon]

SalesForce is in demand, you can learn that for free at trailhead.salesforce.com

 

Tech support is probably a good place to start, everything's connected to something else and we've never had more tech that could break.

 

Java is probably a good language to learn as well, practically everything uses it.

[Lurick]

Check out CBT nuggets and others on YouTube if you want to learn some of the networking side of things.

Lynda.com or some of those e-learning sites should have books as well to get you started.

[Devin92]

well then start leaning AI and machine learning staff, those as you have already ponted out, is the future.

if you are more interested in hardware side, try to get a FPGA board if thats feasible and learn all the design of CPU and PC hardware system. However this is much harder to learn by urself since theres less open source lectures about this.

 

There are tons of other topics under the category of tech, you have to know what you are interested the most.

[Sauron]

To truly understand cyber security topics you need to have a strong understanding of low level hardware, programming and networking first. The default way of getting there is a university degree in computer science or software engineering. You don't necessarily need everything that is taught there though, so you could spare a bit of time (and potentially money depending on your local educational system) by following private courses on services like lynda - however, that would require careful planning of what courses to take.

 

To be clear, this is if you are looking to have a career in this field - if it's just to satisfy your personal curiosity, there are many informational videos on youtube which will give you a general overview of security and related topics. Computerphile is one of the best channels for this sort of thing.

[JusticeBeaver]

Cyber Security is very vague because I work in an area where CS is more management, policy, table top, controls, and etc. It does not really revolve out pentest or the hollywood version of CS that everyone knows. I do break down boards to the bit level to put security policy in place for how we handle hardware and what mitigation we are willing to take for our system. It is not glamorous, but the pay and demand is outstanding. 

 

For me its not really ideal for my passion, but it allows me to make enough money, where I can run my own servers at my home, pentest my own labs, and have the financial freedom to do what I want really. I work with engineers for configuration and change management and write RMF packages. If your interested in this line of work I would recommend looking into security + and get a few years of experience under your belt, and then your CISSP. Holding a CISSP easily nets you 140k on average. 

[tksdev]

Depends on what you want to do in cyber security, if interested in the programming side, a junior web developer role might be quite good. IT support is very hit and miss, as some companies are only interested in hitting there SLAs and KPIs rather than improving the quality and knowledge of there staff, so they tend to break it down a lot, so level 1, level 2, level 3. You could spend 12 -18 months trying to move from level 1, which often involves solving peoples excel issues to level 2 where a lot of the more interesting things happen. 

 

The reason, why I advocate for a web developer position, is the company will need to spend time training you, making you more of a valuable asset. You tend to be treated better and respected more. Also if you are motivated the barrier of entry really isn't that bad, you can spend $15-30 on udemy courses, build yourself a nice portfolio and nerd out over your projects in an interview, to really move up to a level 2 it support you could end up spending thousands on certifications for your Cisco and Microsoft. 

 

With more and more things now being part of the cloud, in my opinion, its the better route and background if you ever wanted to get into security, which isn't an entry-level job. You also learn a lot more command line this route. 

 

Look into the OSCP if interested into pentesting, labs are kinda expensive but if you are really interested in it you should have a lot of fun, and looks great to techies, if not HR. 

[LAwLz]

From my experience, there isn't really a job that is "cyber security". 

I work at a consulting firm and we have different security experts for different fields. 

We have one that has an overall good understanding of things. He is mostly an advisor for what needs to be tested, writes policies, keeps an eye out for news and so on. 

I think all but one member of the networking team has CCNA Security, then we have one guy that's our Firewall/IDS/IPS/VPN/etc guru. That's purely networking related though. 

Then we have one data center consultant who is also involved with locks, alarms and systems like that. 

Then our client consultants have a pretty good understanding of client security. Things like Windows related security. Among them we also have one that's specialized in client security. He does a lot of security audits for clients and deals a lot with anti virus software. 

 

I recommend finding one area that interests you first. 

[Ryujin2003]

Norton does a pretty decent job with a monthly cyber security news letter. Would be good idea to subscriber to that too. Give you stuff to look up and research.

[Orion85]

11 hours ago, Sauron said:

To truly understand cyber security topics you need to have a strong understanding of low level hardware, programming and networking first. The default way of getting there is a university degree in computer science or software engineering. You don't necessarily need everything that is taught there though, so you could spare a bit of time (and potentially money depending on your local educational system) by following private courses on services like lynda - however, that would require careful planning of what courses to take.

 

To be clear, this is if you are looking to have a career in this field - if it's just to satisfy your personal curiosity, there are many informational videos on youtube which will give you a general overview of security and related topics. Computerphile is one of the best channels for this sort of thing.

Yes I follow computer file as one of my weekly go to's on you tube. I'm career driven to be in tech so I will look into the online training thank you. Unfortunately it looks like for computer science and and cyber security degrees you need at least 2 A levels which I do not have or time to go back and do them now aged 32. My grades where C to E. I'm emailing tech companies about apprenticeships. 

[Orion85]

11 hours ago, tksdev said:

Depends on what you want to do in cyber security, if interested in the programming side, a junior web developer role might be quite good. IT support is very hit and miss, as some companies are only interested in hitting there SLAs and KPIs rather than improving the quality and knowledge of there staff, so they tend to break it down a lot, so level 1, level 2, level 3. You could spend 12 -18 months trying to move from level 1, which often involves solving peoples excel issues to level 2 where a lot of the more interesting things happen. 

 

The reason, why I advocate for a web developer position, is the company will need to spend time training you, making you more of a valuable asset. You tend to be treated better and respected more. Also if you are motivated the barrier of entry really isn't that bad, you can spend $15-30 on udemy courses, build yourself a nice portfolio and nerd out over your projects in an interview, to really move up to a level 2 it support you could end up spending thousands on certifications for your Cisco and Microsoft. 

 

With more and more things now being part of the cloud, in my opinion, its the better route and background if you ever wanted to get into security, which isn't an entry-level job. You also learn a lot more command line this route. 

 

Look into the OSCP if interested into pentesting, labs are kinda expensive but if you are really interested in it you should have a lot of fun, and looks great to techies, if not HR. 

So Helpful thank you Tksdev