Getting Started in Infosec – Training Concepts

What’s the Problem?

The growing number of data breaches have risen over the last few years. This fact has demonstrated a serious need for more professionals to answer the call to provide organizations with better measures of protection, detection, and recovery from security incidents. Understanding the business risks associated with an increased dependence on technology for such things as remote work and cloud reliance makes it more important than ever to ensure your company is protected and ready for cyber criminals who want to steal, create damage and cause chaos. Companies, today, recognize the high costs associated with weak security and want to protect the overall integrity and continued existence of their organization’s systems. They want assurance that they will be able to weather the cyber storms of tomorrow. Becoming a cybersecurity professional is an exciting and meaningful way for you to help organizations in trouble.

How Can I get Into Cybersecurity?

There are so many ways for you to start your career as a cybersecurity professional. In this blog, we will highlight some of the most important things to add to your checklist to advance in the field of cybersecurity. One of the most important things to remember when becoming a cyber pro is “to beat a hacker you have to think like a hacker”. Before we get into this idea, remember cybersecurity is often thought of as a journey instead of a destination. There are many ways to get your start in cybersecurity, today.

Let’s start with a basic checklist of questions to test your readiness to get into the cybersecurity field:

Do you know how operating systems work? (CPU/Memory/Network)
Do you have a good understanding of TCP/IP and other networking principles?
Do you have command-line experience on Windows and Linux?
Do you like to solve problems? Does troubleshooting come naturally?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, you have a basic understanding of what is required to get into the cybersecurity field. After establishing you have the basic understanding, you can begin discovering what aspects of the field excite you and spark your passion. The best starting point in becoming a cyber warrior is to take a certification course like CompTIA’s Security+. This course will introduce you to the exciting field of cybersecurity. You can decide if you want to be an offensive security professional which is commonly referred to as an ethical hacker or a defensive security professional which is a role commonly used to defend the organization against attackers.

What will you learn in cybersecurity today?

What is defense-in-depth?
What is Penetration Testing and Threat Hunting?
How to harden systems and applications to make them more resilient towards attacks.
The importance of system isolation and network segmentation.
What is a threat actor’s tactics and techniques?
Understanding attacks like Social Engineering and SQL Injection.
How to address risk to mitigate the impact of a threat.
Support your organization in their move to the cloud and IoT.
How to automate tasks using scripting languages to advance the management and monitoring of company assets against attacks.

Closing Thoughts

You are now on your way to discovering some of the many exciting things you will be able to do as a cybersecurity professional. Now is the time to take the power back and stop the bad actors in their tracks and protect organizations against the hackers of tomorrow and beyond. What are your thoughts on technology and the role of cybersecurity in businesses today?