Like any other discipline, cybersecurity can be learned by yourself. You can learn anything online with the help of the internet. College/University. However, post-secondary education is still valuable, particularly since most employers require a bachelor’s level of education for most jobs. If you are looking for specific skills or a way to move into cybersecurity from another field, then self-teaching is the best choice. For a small career change, you don’t have to return to university. Here are some self-taught resources that can help you learn cybersecurity.
Choose a Focus
Prior to you beginning learning cybersecurity, I recommend that you choose a focus. Although this may seem counterproductive, it can help you to choose a focus. Focusing on two things is the best way to choose a focus. These are either your interests or current skills. If your website was hacked and you were introduced to cybersecurity, you might choose to focus on website security. This will help you prevent other websites from getting hacked. If you are a salesperson and are interested in cybersecurity, you can focus your efforts on becoming a Cybersecurity Sale Engineer. This will allow you to learn the most popular platforms in the field. Cybersecurity is too vast to cover all the topics. You should choose one area with high potential and learn it. This will increase your chances of being proficient in the area, and will make you stand out amongst the rest because you have specialized knowledge. These are some common areas:
- Hacking Computers
- Website Security
- Cybersecurity Law
- Sales Engineer
- Cloud Security
- Programming
Where to learn cybersecurity
Hackthebox.eu, Vulnhub: Hacking into computer systems is the main focus of Cybersecurity. Hacks occur every 39 second, and hacks cost more than $445 billion each year. Hackthebox and Vulnhub offer web servers that can be hacked. You can practice hacking on servers of different difficulty levels. Once a challenge is over, many people make write-ups and youtube tutorials that show you how to hack into the web server. This makes it easy for even beginners to get started.
Udemy:Udemy is an online education platform that offers over 130,000 courses. There are many courses available on cybersecurity, including writing malware, programming and malware analysis.
Youtube Tutorials: Youtube is a great place to find free tech tutorials online. As I mentioned in previous sections, many security researchers create video tutorials that show how they hack into computers and other proof of concepts related to software. It’s simple to prove something works in tech because you can run it on your own machine to verify it. This makes youtube tutorials much more reliable than other careers. You can start by starting with Hackersploit or zSecurity.
Topcoder: These online platforms help you learn coding by presenting practical challenges. These websites offer more than simple exercises and theory. They also allow you to create simple programs in any programming language you choose. Topcoder adds an element of competition where you can compete against other people to create programs faster or more efficiently and find bugs in other people’s programs. Practical challenges such as these are my favorite way to learn and create a portfolio that shows your understanding.
Linux Academy Academy: is an online platform which helps people to learn about various areas of technology. There are many online courses that cover security and technology platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. This is a great way to learn more about cloud security. You can also use up to three servers in the cloud for practice. To get used to the interface, you can log in to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud instances.
Tryhackme: This website teaches cybersecurity to beginners. There are currently three learning paths available: Comptia pentest, complete beginners, and web application security and pen-testing. You can also play a game online that challenges you to hack into other computers and keep control of the computer longer than your fellow players.
Certifications :Cybersecurity certificates provide a well-structured and industry-recognized education. You can choose to focus on a specific area of cybersecurity like Security+, CISSP, or a general program such as Security+. This is because you can follow a structured syllabus and many of them are recognized as trustworthy by companies. You have two options when it comes to completing a certification. You can either self-study or take classes. My experience is that self-study has a better return on investment than classroom instruction. However, even if you do pay for it, you will still need to spend time learning yourself. The best way to prepare is to download the self-study materials and watch the youtube videos on the topic. Next, practice as many questions as possible. Reddit is a great place to look for other people’s resources that helped them pass the certification.
Final Thoughts
You can find almost any subject you wish to learn online thanks to the abundance of resources available. You may face a problem when learning on your own. It can be difficult to know where to focus your attention and how much you need to measure your progress. This is why I recommend that you choose a niche or focus that you are interested in and then focus your efforts on finding resources that can help you get there. This will help you to stay focused and not get distracted.
These resources can also be helpful if you don’t have a technical background but want to learn the skills necessary to enter the field and present that knowledge to companies. It’s essential to create a portfolio that includes everything you’ve done. This could be writing code, taking certification courses, or hacking into servers using any of these platforms. You can only really know if your knowledge is solid by putting it to use.
