IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[JT-Money]

Hey guys, after all the run around bullshytting I've been doing it's time for me to get going in my field.

I'm currently been doing Help Desk (my first IT job post college) at a law firm downtown DC for about 8 months now. I'm pretty sure I want to take my direction in security next. So I'm going to start reading and taking practice exams to get my Sec+. This would be my first cert btw.

I'm just looking for advice from you guys. Any software you can recommend I download? Sites I should visit? I should probably get VMWare shouldn't I? What I should look out for or job opportunities?

Edit: For those in Security, What would you say are the benefits and drawbacks of being in this field. What are some things that you wish you would have known when you first got into the field? Do you like the field? Is it a worthy investment?

The drawbacks are that you're expected to know everything and I mean everything about IT security. You'll be forced to constantly police everyone in the company including people in the IT Department who should know better about following security protocols. And knowing its impossible to keep up with every new malware variant, phishing email or security vulnerability for thousands of different technology products. I can't think of any benefits but then again I've only been doing IT Security for a few years.

I recommend downloading and installing Kali or Backtrack Linux distro's for starters.

And below are a few websites I use.
virustotal.com
pentestgeek.com
precisesecurity.com
pentest-noob.com
http://nmap.online-domain-tools.com/

 

[JT-Money]

Any of yall know VirtualBox? I have a Win7 guest on a Linux host with a bridged network adapter... I can see my home network, but only the Windows computers on it. I need to see the Linux machines as those have the drives I need to work off of. Any ideas?

https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/networking_in_virtualbox1#Bridged

 

[Melt_Man]

For the back end, I'd go for a more experienced person. You want your site to be secure and someone new many not have the knowledge and skills to make your site as secure as you'd like. Front end, you can go with less experience.

Check this link out for an overview
http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/i-dont-speak-your-language-frontend-vs-backend

I sent you a convo.

 

[kevm3]

Hey guys, after all the run around bullshytting I've been doing it's time for me to get going in my field.

I'm currently been doing Help Desk (my first IT job post college) at a law firm downtown DC for about 8 months now. I'm pretty sure I want to take my direction in security next. So I'm going to start reading and taking practice exams to get my Sec+. This would be my first cert btw.

I'm just looking for advice from you guys. Any software you can recommend I download? Sites I should visit? I should probably get VMWare shouldn't I? What I should look out for or job opportunities?

Edit: For those in Security, What would you say are the benefits and drawbacks of being in this field. What are some things that you wish you would have known when you first got into the field? Do you like the field? Is it a worthy investment?

http://community.spiceworks.com/launch/see_all

Check out spiceworks, which is a community dedicated to IT issues.

 

[duckbutta]

Just received and signed my offer for a Systems Engineer position

This is going to be interesting seeing as though I haven't done any real SysEng work since school(building and deploying Unix/Linux systems for class) and I have a mostly NetEng background(CCNA, 2/3 complete CCNP). I think I'm going to enjoy this side of the IT house more though. The guys said they will be training me on the more difficult concepts seeing as the position required 0-2 years experience. It looks weird for a NetEng guy to jump to SysEng, but I'm only 2 years into my career post college and I had to get up off that night shift.

@Chris.B Thanks for that linuxcbt.com link in your post. Looks as though I'll be making that my homepage for a few months.

Breh that training is gonna be you showing up on the first day and they gonna show you how to access the ticket queue and they gonna show you yours and it's gonna already have like 20 tickets in it that they been sitting on for months

They probably in the office right now telling people...oh we hiring a new guy to do these server builds, soon as he get here we will put you in contact with him

LOL at IT training on the job...there is no such thing...

Good luck though breh

 

[RubioTheCruel]

Breh that training is gonna be you showing up on the first day and they gonna show you how to access the ticket queue and they gonna show you yours and it's gonna already have like 20 tickets in it that they been sitting on for months

They probably in the office right now telling people...oh we hiring a new guy to do these server builds, soon as he get here we will put you in contact with him

LOL at IT training on the job...there is no such thing...

Good luck though breh

YOOOO this shyt had me dying cause it's 100% true

 

[Romell]

@duckbutta @RubioTheCruel

Worst comes to worst yeah you right. But a come up is a come up

 

[Solano707]

Just got through with the first domain in Shon Harris CISSP.

 

[tofuspeedstar]

finally scraped everything together over the past 6 months and we're going to start beta testing the IT ticketing system I built using MS Team Foundation Server and our Exchange Server. If they like it, I get paid for the work.

Plus it'll save the company a lot of money in the long term because they pay me just a 1 time bonus and don't have to pay the monthly subscription for the system we were considering.

If they don't though, at least i tried.

 

[SwagmundFreud]

in idiot terms can anyone explain how to get a A+ and Comptia cert? do you have to go somewhere to take the test?

 

[T-K-G]

in idiot terms can anyone explain how to get a A+ and Comptia cert? do you have to go somewhere to take the test?

you didn't even attempt to google that question

 

[SwagmundFreud]

you didn't even attempt to google that question

I-I did...

 

[semtex]

Paper prototyping is so goddamn annoying

 

[↓R↑LYB]

Just got through with the first domain in Shon Harris CISSP.

I remember going through that shyt. Don't worry, it gets worse from there

EDIT: do you qualify for the CISSP breh? Don't wanna pass the test and not get the cert because you don't got enough years of experience.

 

[↓R↑LYB]

finally scraped everything together over the past 6 months and we're going to start beta testing the IT ticketing system I built using MS Team Foundation Server and our Exchange Server. If they like it, I get paid for the work.

Plus it'll save the company a lot of money in the long term because they pay me just a 1 time bonus and don't have to pay the monthly subscription for the system we were considering.

If they don't though, at least i tried.

If you gonna be doing a lot of Exchange work, starting learning powershell breh. That shyt will make you look like a God. Someone came by my desk on some

Cac: Hey bro, can you write a script to determine how many users are on Exchange 2010 vs 2007. We need it yesterday for a big project, please breh
Me: IDK breh, I can maybe swing it Wednesday or Thursday, that's a lot of damn work
Cac: Come on breh, please

Dumb ass don't know that shyt is only like 5 lines of code