Nowadays, cybersecurity is seen as an attractive landscape for ambitious people and a truly great opportunity to fight cybercrime. During the past few months, many cyberattacks have targeted companies around the world. The reason being, there’s a significant shortage of specialized people working in this field to resolve the problem.
This suggests that the demand for professionals working in cybersecurity has increased in all industry sectors due to the rising number of cyberattacks happening every day.
If you want a career in cybersecurity, this is the right time to start. Although you do not need to be a young or old person, or even to need any specialist approval, certification or academic degree, I believe that some of them, such as online certification programs, can help you to reach your goals at the best time.
Enrolling in a University degree such as a four-year program in Computer Science or Computer Information Systems or Information Technology can be an excellent start for those who want to get a job in this area. The know-how and analytical mindset can be developed by studying several subjects, such as mathematics, programming, networking, and others. If this is a possibility for you, academic research could be a good start as well.
However, there is another way to get experience and developing your skills quickly and with great accuracy. Of course, I’m speaking about certifications.
Certification Programs
There are some interesting certifications programs you need to consider to improve your knowledge on specific topics., for example:
CISSP – Certified Information Systems Security Professional
ISACA: CISM – Certified Information Security Manager
CEH (v10) – Certified Ethical Hacking Course
These certifications aren’t equivalent and each of them focuses on different topics. Focusing on the CEH(v10) course, for instance, it will train you on the advanced step-by-step methodologies that hackers actually use, such as writing virus codes and reverse engineering, so you can better protect corporate infrastructure from data breaches. These ethical hacking certifications will help you master advanced network packet analysis and advanced system penetration testing techniques to build your network security skill-set and beat hackers at their own game.
The CEH ethical hacking course can help you:
- Grasp the step-by-step methodology and tactics that hackers use to penetrate network systems.
- Understand the finer nuances of trojans, backdoors, and countermeasures.
- Get a better understanding of IDS, firewalls, honeypots, and wireless hacking.
- Master advanced hacking concepts, including mobile device, and smartphone hacking, writing virus codes, exploit writing & reverse engineering and corporate espionage.
- Gain expertise on advanced concepts such as advanced network packet analysis, securing IIS & Apache web servers, Windows system administration using Powershell, and hacking SQL and Oracle databases.
- Cover the latest developments in mobile and web technologies including Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and HTML 5.
- Learn advanced log management for information assurance and allow you to manage information security with more clarity.
As a final note, and one of the most important things within this field is the great set of inputs for news, articles, tools, and others.
For instance, taking as an example Twitter. Here, it’s available a huge volume of fresh news and resources based on the type of security person you are. Twitter is real-time, which gives it an advantage over traditional sources; you can create or join as a subscriber.
As an active security professional within the cybersecurity landscape, you can check my Twitter updates here.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment in your life, start your next professional journey right now.
About the Author
Pedro Tavares is a cybersecurity professional and a founding member and Pentester of CSIRT.UBI and the founder of seguranca-informatica.pt.
In recent years he has invested in the field of information security, exploring and analyzing a wide range of topics, such as pentesting (Kali Linux), malware, hacking, cybersecurity, IoT and security in computer networks. He is also a Freelance Writer.
Segurança Informática blog: www.seguranca-informatica.pt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirpedrotavares
Contact me: [email protected]
