Cyber Security

[XJ75]

A hot topic at the moment. Anyone work in this field?

I'm looking into this as a potential career change.

I have a background in software development in investment banking. For the last 18 months I've been working as an IT business analyst but I'm considering something completely new.

Any tips or advice for any courses/certifications that might be worth considering?

[bga]

Cyber is quite a popular term at the moment. It's certainly fair to say that the security industry is in growth mode, especially at the entry level.

There are lots of certifications out there. Putting aside vendor ones, some of the more common are:

Security+ : entry level qual
CISSP : most popular cert, as close to an industry standard qual as you will find
CEH : Certified Ethical Hacker - in demand
CCP : Certified Professional - in demand

From a management perspective CISM is worthwhile as is, in my view, M.Inst.ISP.

At the end of the day these are less important than aptitude and, for more senior roles, experience. The security field is very diverse and has roles suitable for all skills. Some roles, like cryptography, are very maths focused. Aspects of application security and pen-testing can get very technical. On the other side, social engineering or security awareness require strong people skills.

[yajeed]

XJ75 said:

A hot topic at the moment. Anyone work in this field?

I'm looking into this as a potential career change.

I have a background in software development in investment banking. For the last 18 months I've been working as an IT business analyst but I'm considering something completely new.

Any tips or advice for any courses/certifications that might be worth considering?

It's a very tough industry to get in to. With the skills shortage, I've no idea why that's the case, but it is.

What in particular would you want to do - it's a very broad topic as mentioned above.

Speaking of which, I'd personally avoid CEH, and you can't get a CISSP without a few years of experience.

I'd also add OSCP to the list, though it'll take time and effort.

[DanCup]

XJ75 said:

A hot topic at the moment. Anyone work in this field?

I'm looking into this as a potential career change.

I have a background in software development in investment banking. For the last 18 months I've been working as an IT business analyst but I'm considering something completely new.

Any tips or advice for any courses/certifications that might be worth considering?

I have a networking and security background so have been shifted into more of a technical cyber security role over the past year or so within my firm (we're in investment management) we're small enough at ~450 employees that I no longer concentrate on just firewalls anymore and am keen to get exposure to as much of the industry as possible. Certifications are important (I have CISSP, CEH and some Cisco and Palo Alto ones), however in my opinion nothing beats real world experience and genuinely being excited by the industry and having a passion for what you do.

In terms of where you should look, have you thought about Application Security (Capital One were looking recently and take an agile/devops/fintech approach and I know they are increasing their security footprint massively) your skills are probably transferable. Automation and Cloud Security also seem to be things coming up quite a bit, ISC2 released a new exam last year tackling Cloud Security specifically - CCSP.

Hopefully the above is of use but shout if you've got any more questions!