Looking to switch into a Cyber Security Career? Watch this!

what's up you guys Nick here welcome back to my channel in today's video I'm actually gonna talk about something other than cloud if you guys have been following me for any length of time all I've been talking about is cloud I have a bunch of videos on AWS a couple of videos on Oracle cloud but the channels actually about cloud security so when you start to talk about cyber security for those of you who do not know me I am a cloud security engineer I've been MIT for almost 10 years now I'm like 8 or 9 years or so and I've done a lot of security related tasks but never I can't say I always had the title of security engineer or something like that when I first started out I was actually a desktop administrator I did the whole PC break and fix thing I did virus removals I did customer support sales network engineering a little bit you know Wi-Fi setups and troubleshooting and stuff like that and then I ended up working my way into like a system admin role systems engineers role where I was doing more scripting I was dealing with UNIX environments I was actually the Mac guy for an MSP which is a managed service provider and I did a lot of Windows stuff too like a Dell with Active Directory but I basically kind of made a beeline into a Mac and Linux type environment dealing with a lot of those tickets and I just handled everything that every medical practice every law practice which those were the main people that had max some education institutes institutions also had Mac's as well and I I was the guy who took care of that and I thought was cool for a while but then I started to get kind of bored and I wanted to explore other areas of IT so I looked into software engineering because you know that was the huge crave especially in YouTube a lot of guys we're talking about how they're making $200,000 as a software engineer I'm a full time full stack developer and look at me I can make all this stuff I'm I'm you know work from home and work from and island in my laptop Papapa Papapa and I'm like okay that's that's cool I like that like I don't have to deal with old dusty Cisco equipment that no one wants to replace because it's so expensive I get to code all day and that was good but then I found out that that really I don't really like that I mean like the you know the pickiness of the customers I didn't like the really that was it I didn't I didn't like there were certain things that you rotated me about it that was like okay this is more like a designer type role I don't really feel like I am the engineer like I want to build and I want to know that my what I'm building is valuable and that people really appreciate that and I didn't really feel that when I was in that role so I kind of lost the passion and then I explored cybersecurity and I think around this time it was like 2016 2017 people were starting to get hacked a lot more it was being more publicized I should say it they're probably getting hacked all along interests didn't know and this is when the new sir blowing up like all these big hacks and that was that was a big thing and I was like okay you know I like security I like locking things down and I like the idea of maybe doing some penetration testing let me start to explore this a little bit more and so I started transitioning from the systems engineer role that I was in into cybersecurity and that's what this video is gonna be about I actually want to talk to you about how to make that transition over from your your standard IT role whether that's like a software developer or your systems engineer like I was maybe your network admin whatever you are if you were wanting to go into cybersecurity because you're seeing the benefits or just piques your interest I think you should and I'm gonna tell you how you can do it now before we continue I want to let you know that there's not just one single way that you go into cyber you don't just start out and sigh where many people don't anyway so most people I think they end up doing what we're doing which is that transition they they start out and that works and then they say I'm going to go to the network security and then I'm going to go into the cloud and they do that or if you're an application engineer if you're if you're a developer then you're you might want to say I'm gonna go into app security and that's gonna be your thing some people do a whole beeline like I'm gonna go from systems engineering to applications security and they got to learn a whole bunch of new stuff like programming and all these things which actually did that but I would say to you that if you want to make that transition it's a lot easier than you're probably thinking and I don't want you to overthink it I tend to do that a lot I know a lot of people deal with that like this is so overwhelming there's so many things I got to learn it's really not that hard so what I want to do is kind of highlight some things that were helpful for me I want to tell you some of my mistakes and we'll go from there so when I was a systems engineer I didn't have a bachelor's degree I knew I needed one in order for me to increase my pay I think at the time I was being capped at around 50 grand a year here in the United States which is okay a lot of people make that and that's it that's a good salary a lot of that's a great salary actually but I wanted to I want to increase my opportunity so I went and signed up for a bachelor's degree online and at the time like I said I was looking into software development so I actually signed up for a degree in software development and that was cool but I lost passion in that I was gonna have to start coding in Java and all this stuff and I was like this is not really what I want to do and I said I'm just gonna I'm just gonna drop out of this and three months later at the same school that I was going for software development at which is actually WGU the Western Governors University it's an online institution they opened up their cybersecurity burger and I was like you know what I've been thinking about cyber I've been looking at hack the box and learning about this stuff on my own I'm gonna go ahead and sign up for that I told my wife and we agreed that was the thing that I was gonna do and and then I went and I did it and I got my degree I pursued it and the cool thing about WGU is that you get a bunch of certifications along the way that help you not only pass classes like those are the final exams are the certification exams but you get your degree too so you're checking multiple boxes when it comes to HR and when you have to go and find a new job when they want you to have that degree and the security plus and then once you have skills like I was checking a lot of those boxes by just pursuing this which is why I did it and if I were to do it again I would have to say even though that was the right move for me I would have looked at other opportunities that maybe were not in cybersecurity per se the reason why I say that is because you don't need a bachelor's degree in cyber in order to get into cyber and they had other opportunities like they had a degree in cloud engineering and that I could have gone for and I would have probably benefited even more because I would have walked away with an AWS assist ops associate certification which is much harder to get and they paid for the voucher they had all the training there and personally I thought you know that probably would have been a great move but you know no regrets I I'm glad I did what I did but I just wanted to share that experience with you and let you know that if you're thinking you have to go back to school to go get a cyber security degree you don't if you have a degree in art and you want to go into cyber security you can do that you don't need to go get a whole nother bachelor's degree and let me tell you what when I was going into my degree for cyber security and I know this is you know I went through an online institution and sometimes they have a bad rap with people I also know that on-premise institutions like your public institutions where you have to go into the brick-and-mortar and you have to attend those classrooms in classes and all about the the curriculum is not that much different they're all outdated I'm just gonna say that very plain blatantly that they're all updated what they're teaching does not change enough to keep up with the flow of IT or cyber security you know whether you're gonna go here or there you're gonna do it online or gonna do it I'm premise it doesn't really matter you're getting this degree to check the box that's it at the end of the day the employers just want to know that you have a degree so if you have it in or you have it in basket weaving which I know that's like a stereotypical example if that's what you have that's fine go and move on to the next thing which is actually certifications I really want to highlight the certifications that really matter in the industry now mind you I'm a senior cyber security engineer part of my job is actually staffing I actually help people get staffed in projects that require their skill sets so I've done quite a bit of research figuring out what certifications are worth it what do they mean what do project managers look for what do hiring managers look for what is the client care about and really I think I've summarized it down to only a handful of certifications that really matter depending on what you're going for now let's take a step back and think you know cybersecurity is pretty vast you have privacy you have penetration testing you have sock analysts type work where you're dealing with you know analyzing threats and coming all the time and there's network security incident handling I mean there's just so many different options so many different paths you can go down and it seems like every path that you go now there's a certification for that path we're gonna talking about how you can make the transition from standard IT into generalized cybersecurity and I think depending on what type of experience you have and how much experience you have these certifications will help you hone in and find the right job and ultimately that right salary that right opportunity for you depending on your experience so the first type is the first cybersecurity certification that I would recommend you go for is the SSCP now the SSCP is made by the organization is C square which they also make the CISSP the CISSP we're gonna get to in a second but that's like the mack daddy of general cybersecurity certifications the SSCP is like the mini cissp it's $250 and you have to have one year of experience in order for you to obtain the certification otherwise you just you have the associate now you're probably thinking okay I need to have one year of experience why would I go for that if I don't have any experience that's the thing you probably do have experience already if you're already working in IT and I say that because most IT roles do deal with some form of some domain of cybersecurity and you don't even realize it like removing viruses off of a system or off of a server that's cyber security I mean that is system security you're securing a system and so if you've been doing that for a year you qualify to get the SSCP certification and therefore you would qualify to move over into cyber security I mean granted you have some experience and you interview well and you find the right opportunity you could theoretically start making that transition very quickly now if you don't have that type of experience maybe you haven't been doing you know secure coding if you're a developer and you want to move into cyber security and security engineering if you don't have that experience then what I would recommend is going for something like the security plus which doesn't have an experience requirement to it you just passed the exam you have a certification and then you can start focusing on building your skills now if you're not a beginner and you've been working in IT for five six years I would recommend that you start looking at something like the CISSP or the C is a or the C is M which those last two are by Asaka the CISSP is by the is e-square organization if you are not looking to go into general ite and you won't actually specialize in something like penetration testing I would say let's move all the stuff aside and focus on the OS CP the OS CPA is like the gold standard for penetration testing and hacking it's a really good certification I think it cost about eight or nine hundred dollars altogether for the actual exam and the nature of the exam is pretty unique it's all hands-on for the most part I think you're sitting down for 24 hours and testing I think you can take breaks there but you're really just hacking virtual machines and there's a doctor watching you so you can do it from home where you have somebody watching you on a webcam making sure that you are abiding by the rules and that you're you do what's necessary and then so you can pass I've never taken the exam I know people who have actually the cyber mentor who's another youtuber here he's actually taking it and he talks a little bit about it on his channel so if you want to learn more I'll post a link to his channel in my description so that you can follow him and check them out but as far as general IT stuff goes I would recommend but as far as general cybersecurity stuff goes I would recommend that of your beginner go for the SSCP or the security plus and if you're an experienced person go for the CISSP the C is a and the C is M now once you've gotten your certification the next step that you need in order to make that transition and get that job in cybersecurity is to start gaining experience now this kind of depends on what you're trying to pursue like if you're trying to be a cloud security engineer like me then you need to start learning the cloud and then you don't have to go get a client certification if you don't already have one and start working on some labs that deal with security engineering in the cloud so like AWS security tools and finding different ways that you can secure stuff and their vulnerabilities and things like that but if you're trying to go for something like penetration testing you would want to go for something like hack the box or any of those other type of environments maybe the dam vulnerable web application where you are testing that or webgoat or something like that I think they have web sheep is another one bio wasp when you're just doing a bunch of different security attacks and analyzing what the vulnerabilities are and how you can on your way hack your way into the system and take advantage of these different vulnerabilities these are actually like capture the flag type games they're their games essentially and they're pretty cool I've done a couple of them and I found them to be not only really fun but very educational you learn scripting it's a lot of hands-on experience and I think it carries over very well into a security and barn so if you're trying to gain experience that's one really good way to do that so to summarize this video I think the SSCP and the security plus are the top two that you need to go for in order to make that transition all right guys that about wraps up this video I hope this is super helpful make sure to hit the subscribe button smash the like button and leave a comment section below I want to hear from you let me know if you plan on going for any of these certifications or if you're planning on going for another cybersecurity certification that I maybe I didn't listen this video if you have any thoughts I want to hear from you also I wanted to make sure to let you know that I've opened up a discord server for anyone that is following me anyone that wants to talk about cloud security or cyber security or cloud engineering it's for all of those people that want to get into the community and start learning I'm going to post a link to that discord server in my description below this video so make sure to join it's absolutely free and when you're in there I want to hear from you there's an introduction area go ahead and let me know who you are where you're from what do you do and all that stuff alright guys I will talk to you later peace

Channel: Nicolas Moy

Views: 28,650

Rating: 4.9568462 out of 5

Keywords: cyber security, cyber security jobs, cybersecurity, cybersecurity careers, cyber security career, cyber security careers, cybersecurity for beginners, cissp, sscp, cyber security certifications, cyber security engineer, oscp, cism, cisa, cybersecurity jobs, penetration tester, cloud security, cloud security engineer, ethical hacker, careers in cybersecurity, cyber security training

Id: QXTszbT_viA

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020