About
Purpose of this Blog Series
These blogs have two main purposes. The first is to document everything I’ve learnt while working towards the goal of obtaining a career in the security industry. The second and most important purpose, is to insire and guide others looking to get their foot in the door in InfoSec.
Let’s take a moment to talk a little more about the second purpose. I’ve consumed a decent amount of ‘This is how to get into InfoSec’ content, and I still do. In general, I believe the advice given is extremely helpful in leading you on the right path of acquiring all the knowledge and experience of landing a job in InfoSec. The problem however with all this advice, is that it’s general and there are so many different paths that can ultimately lead to that job you want in InfoSec. All these options and conflicting paths can make it very confusing to those new to the world of IT, or working in a Helpdesk role, to figure out how they can progress their skills and efficiently work towards building a skillset that will make them employable in InfoSec. I’m hoping that these blogs can provide a structured guide on how to develop employable skillsets. If I’m successful in my journey to enter the InfoSec industry, then others can also find success by copying or using these blogs as a guide on how they can progress their careers.
About Me
Now that you know a little bit about why I’m writing these blog posts, let me tell you about myself. I’ve been working in IT for a little over a year now. My first role was IT Support at a highschool. I was responsible for the common tasks you find in a level 1 Helpdesk position such as password resets, syncing issues, printer issues, hardware issues (highschool boys are very careless with laptops!), moving/setting up IT equipment between desks and helping teachers with IT related classroom issues. The most valuable lesson I learnt here was how to work in a team in an IT environment and gaining a little bit of exposure to various technologies that get used in enterprise environments, such as Active Directory. After a year of working at the school, I moved on to my now current employer where I am responsible for providing Support to the small business. Working for a small business also means I’m sometimes required to wear mutiple different hats such as performing basic systems and network administration tasks, writing scripts to automate IT processes, improving the security posture of the organisation and of course, providing support to end users.
These blog posts will mainly focus on the skills I’m acquiring through the pursuit of certifications and what I believe to be the cornerstone of every successful InfoSec professional, a homelab. However, it is important for you to understand where I am at with my knowledge so you can gain the foundational skills needed to follow along with this blog series and land yourself that InfoSec job! Blog 0 - The Initial Blog contains a summary of my experiences learning these skills and will hopefully help guide you in the right direction to learning these foundational skills yourself.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy and find this series helpful to learning about the world of InfoSec!