Get Started in Cybersecurity 2024 (A Guide)

as we are in the new year of 2024 we have opportunities to begin learn or Advance our cyber security careers in today's video I will be providing a guide with how to get started in cyber security from my perspective now this video is broken up into two sections technical content and generic career based advice this video is very similar to a previous issue I did last year at this time echoing simil more advice there are a few changes specifically with leveraging AI llms I know it sounds trendy but there are some really cool use cases that you can do so let's go ahead and get into the technical content with the eight steps that I recommend starting out with in cyber security all right so starting out technical step one is to read and consume content so start reading the security news uh your fan favorite books or consuming or listening to content while you are commuting uh reading the security news in books familiarizes oneself with the uh General en Concepts and practices in security Now specifically with security news you're learning about the most recent attack techniques and defenses applied in the industry story based security books and podcasts provide deep dives into interesting stories in security news and exposes oneself to just the General Security industry you can learn a lot from consuming General cyber security resources so when you don't understand a phrase or a concept mentioned within an article for example you can use Google or chat gbt to summarize the content or the phrase and then you can add that to your notes section and after a while what you'll find is you have a huge Archive of notes of just various Concepts strategies attacks and defenses you're learning I recommend consuming about 15 minutes a day of the either security news a book or listening to podcast if time permits so number two is learning the fundamentals of it the fundamentals of it means learning the basics of computer hardware software operating systems networking and just general computers now you need to learn the underlying Concepts or the it fundamentals in order to understand how things work together uh so you can learn the fundamentals in a lot of different ways I recommend using the CompTIA A+ Network plus and Security Plus exam objectives that are provided for free in PDF format what I recommend doing is going through each of those objective guidelines and just researching each concept one by one using once again Google or chat GPT and formalizing with a Archive of notes once you have a decent understanding of the fundamentals of it number three is to taking a deep dive into computer networking so computer networking is the backbone uh of our internet infrastructure that connects various devices and systems it's what creates the internet learning various Concepts such as networking Hardware the tcpip and OSI model Network architecture such as segmentation subnetting Network protocols and network security are fundamental properties of it security so it's important that you take a deep dive into computer networking now I recommend as a free resource looking at the CompTIA Network plus exam objectives as a template for learning the basics once again you could use Google Chat GPT to look up these Concepts step number four is to learn the basics of computer programming and scripting choose a popular userfriendly programming language such as python this is the one that I recommend and you can transition into any other scripting or programming language such as Powershell bash are go programming and more so scripting are used for General Security analysts to do a lot of different processes specifically with automation so you can automate a certain process or work flow you can build a command line tool which will automate a certain process and even creating security Integrations via apis is important so scripting is a Paramount skill to have within this industry now learning the basics of scripting maybe how to write a small scripts read scripts and generally just exposing oneself to programming languages is going to help you in this industry tremendously so I recommend uh for resources looking at free crash courses on YouTube given the programming language or scripting language that you choose so python there's no need to go out and buy various UD me courses uh so I Che recommend checking out Ryan John's crash course fundamental of python for cyber security YouTube Crash Course technical step five is operating system Basics learn the basics of navigating the windows and Linux operating systems specifically with navigating the command line looking at or using common shell commands the basics of os architecture via kernel user space and system calls learning how to set up virtual machines via windows and Linux and then also looking at file system process and memory management Linux is a sizable component for the backend infrastructure powering the internet and overall servers so learning the basics of Linux architecture and how it differs from a traditional windows or Uni's environment can be very helpful in you advancing your security career now on the other hand Microsoft Windows Powers the large majority of business and user workstations and business internal networks understanding the common techniques and tactics attackers use to infiltrate Within These networks as well as the defenses that you have as a cyber Defender all right so step six is finally moving into cyber security or security Basics so so learn the basics of security Hardware strategies common attack techniques as well as defenses and overall cyber security tools so if you followed all of the previous five steps the sixth step will be much easier to move into you can learn about the basics of security hardware and then expose oneself to software tools such as vulnerability scanners SS firewalls IDs IPS and lots of other acronyms so at this point you're learning the basics of security tools and techniques used um once again I do recommend as a free resource looking at CompTIA Security Plus exam objectives via the PDF guide looking at those contents via Google or chat GPT and just building a notes section you can also take a look into the miter attack framework as well as the defend Matrix these are comprehensive guides for common techniques tactics and defenses that cyber Defenders and attackers can use and finally for step seven is learning cloud and virtualization So within the last decade Cloud Technologies cloud computing has become ubiquitous within our environment learning the basics of the three major Cloud providers Amazon web services Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud product gcp are going to be greatly beneficial to your understanding of how the cloud and on premises work together so basically basically what is the cloud it Powers virtualization via using someone else's computer so you're just renting somebody else's Hardware uh virtualization does a lot of different things but ultimately in a security perspective virtualization is going to help with ma sandboxing deploying honey pots building temporary environments and many other items I recommend formalizing yourself with one cloud provider at a time it doesn't really matter which one you pick for reference right now I'm I'm still uh using AWS that is the primary one that I have been focusing on for the last 2 years um ultimately the cloud products may be in different names but the overall architecture of the cloud or the providers that are you're using are going to be very similar to gain exposure or learn one of the cloud providers I recommend looking at their respective documentation or YouTube crash courses uh there are entrylevel certifications that each of the three provide uh specifically with Amazon web services it's the AWS certified Cloud practitioner the Microsoft certified Azure fundamentals or Google's Google Cloud digital leader or the Google Cloud associate Cloud engineer uh these are good entry level certifications to take a look at the exam objectives and perhaps pursue to gain just a general exposure to the three providers from a career perspective there is a lot of generic advice that influencers and marketers are trying to give you uh so overall these are kind of my generic career-based steps number one is to develop a plan and stay consistent to that plan and also develop documentation so as you begin your career in this industry try to create some sort of learning plan and stay true to this plan whether that's learning an open- Source tool pursuing a certification or looking to get a university three I think that it's important that you create a plan uh and stick to that and then also make sure you have documentation space whether you want to use Joplin obsidian uh notion or any other type of platform I recommend taking extensive documentation so you can reference that for when you forget later on Career recommendation two is Project based learning or approach so whether that's ctfs uh cyber security home lab via virtualization overall building a portfolio of projects not only is this going to help you with you know getting a handson perspective in getting started in cyber security but also it's a portfolio of projects where you can talk about that to maybe some future recruiters or employers for my third recommendation uh pursuing a formal qualification maybe that's a University degree a few cyber security certifications these can be useful for your overall learning process as well as making you perhaps more suitable as a prospective candidate a general technology computer science cyber security degree or sticking to the main uh cyber security certifications are probably going to be your best bet overall I it's a portfolio that you're trying to build when you are applying to these jobs career-based set for apply with AI so with the arrival of new AI platforms this past year uh there's been a different approach to applying online depending on kind of how you look at it using AI platforms such as lazy apply or simplify um you can have these systems or platforms go out for you and submit resumés on your behalf on online postings uh such as indeed or LinkedIn this makes it easyier to get your resume out to hundreds of companies without manually having to apply to them and well you're still competing against a massive crowd of applicants when you apply online but it may help your chances with Landing an introductory interview and finally is staying consistent and building your network of community professionals so stay consistent to the process it's something I need to learn and continue to do it myself and uh continue to build your network in whatever way that is Discord servers it can be anything online or in person meetups it doesn't really matter the infos community Community is truly a great Community depending on what side of community you're in uh that can be very supportive for you so make sure to stay involved in the community uh and you never know what may happen when it comes to Landing possible employment opportunities so as we begin 2024 the New Year I hope that this video can be a Consolidated resource for you to help at least start or continue to grow in your cyber security career I'm still learning myself I have a lot to learn um and these are just some of the items that I have learned along the way so far so uh all resources will be in the link in the description below happy New Year and well until the next video have a good day

Channel: Grant Collins

Views: 74,316

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Id: qMmqWly86JM

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 31 2024