IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

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Mirin4rmfar

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Akae Beka said:
In the process of going to school for a IT degree, I start on the 28th. I need a career change down the line(sooner than later) and although what I do makes me right a 6 figures, It's not something I want to do the rest of my life. I know a lot of professional and black professional in the IT field with government contract gigs and as I age closer to 40(36), I need the kind of flexibility (in regards to my work in grouphomes/healthcare). A lot of people were telling me to just get certs instead of going back to school but I know not having a degree and prohibit you from gaining as much ground as you could, at least that's what I've read in regards to HR management and beyond

With that being said, is getting (and learning for) a comtia A+ a good starting point? Or should I start with a CCNA? I'm sort of a newbie but not quite and I know I'll need experience. I can finish this degree in under 3 years but I want to pick up cert while at it. It can at least count towards credits for my degree.
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I would focus on the certs honestly. Your degree does not have to be in I.T. I work in cyber security and do not have a cyber security degree and I dropped out of top grad school program for computer science during week 1 lol. I also applied for a grad program in cyber security and never went after getting accepted.

The certs ended up working for me...I went from security support engineer(endpoints, firewalls, ids/ips, cloud sec platform) to now doing security audits. With that sad all of our paths are different. Some did help desk, some the degree route, some got in after connections. It's tons of different paths.
 
thaKEAF

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Mirin4rmfar said:
I would focus on the certs honestly. Your degree does not have to be in I.T. I work in cyber security and do not have a cyber security degree and I dropped out of top grad school program for computer science during week 1 lol. I also applied for a grad program in cyber security and never went after getting accepted.

The certs ended up working for me...I went from security support engineer(endpoints, firewalls, ids/ips, cloud sec platform) to now doing security audits. With that sad all of our paths are different. Some did help desk, some the degree route, some got in after connections. It's tons of different paths.
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What would you say is a good skill set for entry level security? Im mainly seeing cli in Linux, python and sql along with splunk. Of course your normal knowledge of CIA triad stuff. I want to focus on actual skills once I finish this google cert and redoing the security+.
 
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thaKEAF said:
What would you say is a good skill set for entry level security? Im mainly seeing cli in Linux, python and sql along with splunk. Of course your normal knowledge of CIA triad stuff. I want to focus on actual skills once I finish this google cert and redoing the security+.
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take the sc-200
lab sentinel and defender (specifically cloud and endpoint)
with knowledge of a SIEM and XDR you will level up quickly.
target MSSPs if you want to get hired quickly and touch a lot of things.
 
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Mirin4rmfar

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thaKEAF said:
What would you say is a good skill set for entry level security? Im mainly seeing cli in Linux, python and sql along with splunk. Of course your normal knowledge of CIA triad stuff. I want to focus on actual skills once I finish this google cert and redoing the security+.
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If I was certing right now...I would focus on the following

XDR/Endpoint platform like crowdstrike.
Zero trust network platform like netskope, zacaler
Linux/Python

One cloud platform like aws
Splunk for logging
And of course Linux

..........

It all depends on what u want to....some jobs u can be an endpoint engineer, a zero trustwork engineer only or aws

.......

Like jtmoney mentioned there are people coasting in the field making 130K while there are people burnt the fuk for the same money n less.
 
AyBrehHam Linkin

AyBrehHam Linkin

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ViShawn

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I recently got two Splunk Certs in the past three weeks. They're relatively easy.

I'm trying to decide if I want to pursue the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate. It seems fairly straightforward. I have Cloud experience but the past few years I've been in the weeds with Hadoop (Kakfa, Spark, Solr).

I want to go into other pre-sales role since the one at my current position is about to end.
 
DrDoom

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Data-Hawk said:
Passed Security+ today. Not bad. I can see if you were brand new to IT, this would take sometime to study for and be a pain in the ass lol.

The Measureup practice exams were harder than the actual test lol

up next : Linux+.
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Congrats.
 
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