Choose the right path & training to start your career in cybersecurity

The main motive of this blog is to understand the different cybersecurity fields and how you can join cybersecurity for career perspective.

From the beginner’s point of view, it is important to understand the right path to start anything in your life.

So how do you kick start your career in this field whether you are an IT student or a non-IT student ( at least have a basic understanding of the internet and networks)?

So let’s make it simple because it is necessary to understand what type of knowledge you must have before joining this field.

So let’s divide your knowledge into some categories:-

1. A good programmer with and good command of networking.
2. Good programmer but not good at networking
3. Good command over networks but not good at programming
4. Basic understanding of programming and networking
5. A general idea about the web and networks.
6. Not good in network and programming but wants to join cybersecurity.

So choose a category in which you are good, now I will be explaining all of the mazer fields so choose any as per your knowledge base.

1. IT  Risk, Governance & Compliance: –  Every organization is based on three pillars (i).people   (ii) process  (iii) Technology.

According to Webopedia

Governance, Risk, and Compliance, or GRC for short, refers to a company’s coordinated strategy for managing the broad issues of corporate governance, enterprise risk management (ERM) and corporate compliance with regard to regulatory requirements.

Specifically, the three pillars of GRC are:

• Governance – The effective, ethical management of a company by its executives and managerial levels.
• Risk – The ability to effectively and cost-efficiently mitigate risks that can hinder an organization’s operations or ability to remain competitive in its market.
• Compliance – A company’s conformance with regulatory requirements for business operations, data retention, and other business practices

I know these particular definitions look very much overblown.

So in simple words, IT Risk, Governance, and compliance the main role of a Security auditor is to make the policies, procedures, and rules that everybody needs to follow as per standards & frameworks like ISO 31000, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ITIL, etc. These particular policies, procedures & procedures will help an organization to minimize business risks like loss of data, loss of reputation, loss of trust from people, etc.

So if you are not a core technical person and you have a business mind then this will be one of the best fields for everyone.

2. Security Operational Center –   A SOC will handle, on behalf of a company, any threatening IT incident, and will ensure that it is correctly identified, analyzed, communicated, investigated, and reported. The SOC also monitors applications to identify a possible cyber-attack or intrusion (event) and determines if it is a genuine malicious threat (incident) and if it could affect business.

So a person should not be required to sound too technical, a basic understanding of the web and networks is sufficient in order to join this domain.

The core responsibilities of a person are to handle security incidents, collect logs from various platforms like websites, applications, databases, data centers, servers, systems, firewalls, endpoints, Networks & desktops, etc.)  & protect an organization through many SIEM tools like HP ArcSight, IBM Qradar, Logrhythm, Alianvault, Splunk, etc. A person just needs to learn these tools and their working flow and can join any organization as a SOC L1, and L2 analyst.

3. Threat Hunter

A threat hunter examines the active adversaries in the infrastructure. A threat hunter should have a solid understanding of the real-world infrastructure attack life cycle, and a solid adversary-alike mind to understand the nature of intruders and take them down. This Profile requires both Pentesting and SOC experience.

4. Cyber Forensics & IR: – A DFIR Expert is a digital investigator, who collects and examines evidence from computers, networks, and other forms of data storage devices.

For this field person should have knowledge of programming language in malware analysis & reverse engineering. Also for network forensics fluency in Networking is required, as knowledge of operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac, also a lot of patience is required in forensic investigation.

5. Network Security & Configuration Review, Baseline security – The main aim of a network Security Analyst is to Pentest the organization’s Internal & Networks like LAN, Wireless, VLAN, and Servers and to find loopholes in these platforms and remediate the issues.

Configuration Review and baseline security ensure that all of the systems are up-to-date with the latest patches, Configurations of networks, servers, active directories, and Databases are well configured, and proper policies are implemented for enterprise security.

For this field, a Detailed understanding of Networking is required to join this field.

6. Web Application Security: – In the Web application security field, the Security analyst’s responsibility is to secure the web application, Web services, and API from outside attackers.

A good understanding of programming and networking is required to join this domain. you need to perform static analysis and dynamic analysis of web applications in short.

A new era in the web application industry started with the name DEVSECOPS. Organizations designing products and services with heavy-duty automation. With heavy-duty automation often code level and infrastructure flow together creating a lot of blunders. The involvement of the security team in DevOps operations is a must.

7. Mobile Application Security: – Mobile Applications are more trending as compared to websites in today’s era if you have good knowledge of programming language and have an extraordinary mind to find loopholes in mobile apps then go for this field.

8. IoT security testing: — As per Wiki “The Internet of Things (IoT) is the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. Embedded with electronics, Internet connectivity, and other forms of hardware (such as sensors), these devices can communicate and interact with others over the Internet, and they can be remotely monitored and controlled”

In Simple words IoT = Hardware + Sensors + Mobile App + Cloud + Web

So if you really have a good understanding of programming like machine learning, Python & clean Networking concepts then join this field as per career perspective.

9. Cloud Security – During the pandemic a lot of businesses shifted themselves to cloud-native operations. A large amount of workforce was suddenly needed in this area and it opened doors for hackers. A cloud security guy should understand the Secure Cloud Architecture, implementation of bare metal cloud servers, identity and access management, hybrid cloud operations, and automation in cloud operations. The main responsibilities of a cloud security engineer are to Pentest the cloud infrastructure and validate the insecurities in the cloud-native implementations.

 So now which training is more suitable to start your career in the cybersecurity domain Lets Discuss in a short summery .

If you are a newbie and do not have any idea about the cybersecurity domain start off with learning Linux Fundamentals + CISCO CCNA + Python fundamentals for a better learning experience.

then else Join the Codefensive Offensive Operations Masterclass for beginner to advanced learning.

If you have a basic understanding of Cybersecurity already then start your career in Red Team Assessments  Or Web Application Security.

Mobile Application Security & IoT security training are for those candidates who need to enhance their skills more practically and want to update their skills from existing Pentesting knowledge.

Join Blue Team, Windows Forensics & IR, Threat Hunting Professional, and Splunk SIEM training to become the SOC L1, L2, L3, Threat Hunter & Incident Responder.

If you are interested in learning about all the fields of cybersecurity then.

Join Codefensive Networks for online, One to One, Customized training’s with real life case studies .