I apologize if this question is off-topic for this forum, but I couldn’t find a more suitable section to ask.
I’m eager to pursue a career in Information Security and aim to become either an intern or a junior specialist in the field. However, I’m not sure where to begin and whether I should focus on self-study or invest in professional courses.
Here’s my current background:
I’m confident in basic computer skills.
I have a general understanding of networks but lack in-depth knowledge of principles and terminology.
I don’t have programming experience yet, but I’m willing to learn.
I recently started learning Linux basics.
I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to get started in this field, especially considering my limited budget. If you have experience in this area, could you please share the steps or resources that helped you succeed?
Additionally, I’d like to understand the realistic timeline: how long would it take to prepare for an intern or junior-level position if I dedicate time to learning every day?
Sounds like you’ve already made a reasonable start!
To learn about networking, the CCNA courses are good, you don’t necessarily need the exams but the content is excellent for learning about networking and routing and switching etc;
This is a free study guide site for ccna so you can learn for free;
You don’t need programming experience as such, but learning some bash scripting to be able to chain tools together, or even some python is a good start;
Then there is practicing your art of course;
How long it takes, depends on how quickly you pick things up really, and the best advice is to get to know people already involved in the field, networking people is perhaps the greatest tool you can have in this field.
After you’ve gotten good with the free stuff I’ve linked too, or feel you are ready for some certs the the best one by far would be the OSCP in terms of proving your creds;
If your looking for a junior role somewhere first, you could start with some free certs like this sort of thing, just to prove your interest to a prospective employer;
and platforms like hack the box can be used too to showcase your skills.
I feel like I’m in the same boat as you right now. I’m fairly experienced with Linux, Networking, and basic security concepts, however, I work as a CNA and my wife was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and is unable to work anymore. I’m pretty much holding down the fort. This wasn’t meant to be a sob story, I promise.
I’m just saying that sometimes academic education and certifications just aren’t in the range of possibility.
I am basically obsessed with the idea of landing an IT career though. I’m beginning to think that maybe social networking (at least I hope) will provide some kind of key.
If you can impress upon people that you know what you are doing, and signal that you would be a delight to work with, that goes a long way for landing a career in your desired field.
Thanks man. I tend to agree with that too. ■■■■. It’s kinda hard in this new digital landscape we’ve wandered ourselves into to know when I’ve learned enough to even start. I mean, I get that the learning never ends, and that’s one of the aspects about this stuff that’s so attractive to me. Anyway. Wanted to say thanks. I’d better get going to work.
How much you need to know first would depend entirely on where you want to end up.
Work backwards, identify the job or roles that you think you want to work in, and then you can plan a roadmap to get there.
For example, if you want to do bug bounty, you don’t need a lot of knowledge to get going, mainly tenacity to keep at it and some basics. It is also very easy to fall into what some describe as tutorial hell, where you never feel ready, and so don’t actually start ‘in the real world’, on real problems.
The problem here is that you are hacking on deliberately vulnerable systems, which are great learning tools, but in the real world systems are open by mistake or bad configuration, so keeping at it is requirement to find the chinks.
In this game, even when your experienced you will still suffer from imposter syndrome, you can never know it all, and you will always feel like you don’t know enough, so in the end, you just have to start somewhere, and dive in.