When I look back on all the things I've learned just to get to the point where penetration testing made sense for me, I can see now why I was told SOOO many times 'don't go straight into cyber.'
But, and let's be real here... my inner monologue was:
"Help desk sucks, and I don't want to be forced into systems administration because that's even worse. Networking? Oh man that's simple and the only reason it seems hard is that it's so boring. Coding? That stuff makes me want to punch a wall it's so hard (I'm talking production level code)."
I JUST WANTED TO BE IN SECURITY... and in my case I love popping boxes and finding vulnerabilities in code.
Here's the thing though, while prepping for my OSCP I have utilized sysadmin while setting up VMs, setting up MS Server, and a whole lot while interacting with Linux.
My web dev skills have come into play while analyzing code and vulnerabilities in web apps... and at various points while setting up web servers to host client code for analysis.
Networking... guys that comes up all over the place and I'm not kidding about that at all. Do not skip networking! The CCNA will SAVE YOUR LIFE!
What I'm saying is that unfortunately for the new people I'm doubling down on the statements put forward by others saying you can't go straight into cyber... at least you shouldn't. And you DEFINITELY can't go straight into pentesting!
In today's job market especially, I'd be looking at networking combined with cloud expertise as a staging ground for a career in cyber security.
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