How do you get a job in cybersecurity with no experience? What is my day to day? Like? Do I
travel? Do I work long hours? Do I work remotely? How did I move to different roles? And what kind
of certifications do you need to get started? Hello, friends. Welcome back. If you haven't
guessed it yet, this is a q&a. I'm Venicia, and I'll be answering a lot of your questions that I
received with regards to careers in cybersecurity. Okay, so first list typically comes from
q&a that I do on Instagram. If you're not following me on Instagram, that is the
main platform, which I use on the daily and I typically post a lot of cybersecurity content.
So do go check it out. So I've got the iPad here, and I've got a lot of your
Instagram questions that I'm going to use today to answer these questions for you. Okay, so firstly,
I get asked this question a lot, and it is a quick one. So I'll address it quickly.
Is cybersecurity a remote career field? Or can you have a remote job when working in time security?
And the answer is simple. It is yes. Most of the cybersecurity roles can be done remotely,
but obviously it depends on the organization on the ways work of that organization.
But I work fully 100% remote, I have even worked remote prior to COVID. So I do not am not office
based and a lot of cybersecurity professionals are not office based a lot of cybersecurity
professionals even sit in one country and work for an organization in a different country.
So can you work remotely in cybersecurity? Yes, it is one of the perks and the benefits.
Next question. Do you have to start at the help desk? Or can you start straight into
cybersecurity? Okay. Now, definitely a lot of cybersecurity professionals would recommend
that you start at the help desk, because you would really just gain a lot of experience
with working with different tickets, working with different people, stakeholder management,
dealing with different difficult customers, etc. I personally did not start at the help desk,
I started in a remote desktop support job, meaning that I would go out to different
customers, and they would have technical issues. And I would resolve the technical issues. And this
wasn't per se cybersecurity issues. It was just technical remote support sysadmin kind of work.
So I would say it depends. It depends on the organization, it depends on the role
that you're looking at. If you're starting from zero, basically, a lot of the times you would
find jobs that is more like helpdesk related jobs, especially for security analysts,
because as a level one analyst, you'd typically be doing a lot of ticket management,
and a lot of those basics before you actually move out of the helpdesk and work in the sock.
I don't think you have to start at the helpdesk. I think that if you're able to
get a job straight into cybersecurity, then you do not have to. Is it good? Yes. Does it give
you a different exposure and experience? Yes, but you certainly don't have to. Okay, next question.
How can I get into cybersecurity with a few certifications, but no IT
background? Okay, so this is an interesting one. And it also depends on what you want to do. So
if you want to be technical, then you would definitely need some of the basics
to get started into cybersecurity. And I made a video which I'll link somewhere,
but you have to understand how things work. So how do systems work?
How did processes work? How does technology work? How does traffic flow over the internet, etc.
And you can teach yourself those basics you don't have to go and do certifications in those basics.
But if you have no experience then I would say you're the best thing you can do is to actually
bolt some skills skills are very important and you you need to actually build some skills and do some
hands on work so that you can understand the processes of investigation analysis,
assessment using different tools etc. Of course if you want to go into the more
technical side. Now if you've done cybersecurity certifications already, like your CompTIA Security
Plus or other cybersecurity certifications, then if you want to get a job in cybersecurity that's
not necessarily hands on and technical then you can look into the compliance side of things the
governance risk and compliance risk manager meant, you can look into even vulnerability
assessments where you would work with different vulnerabilities and run scanning tools, etc.
That typically doesn't require you to be extremely technical to start off with. But
you will have to gain technical insights to then communicate different vulnerabilities to different
stakeholders at different levels, etc. Or you can also go into some of the
other side of things. So you can look into cybersecurity project management, sales,
you can look into technical writing for cybersecurity, you can look into report writing.
So there's a lot of other faces that you can look into. That's not necessarily technical.
It doesn't require you to really have an IT background, but it requires you to know how to
write proper documentation, how to communicate effectively, how to manage stakeholders, and
how to write reports, etc. Next question, do you travel in your job? And how often do you travel?
Oh, this is a world crashing question after a pandemic,
because everyone has just stopped traveling.
Okay, but to answer this question prior to the pandemic, and actually Prior to working
at Microsoft, I traveled a lot for my job, but I wouldn't say it was like,
live or die kind of travel requirements, it was definitely not that it was attending different
security conferences or going to a different country to go and speak at an event or seek
going to see different customers and having strategic workshops, etc. in a different country.
So yes, then at that stage, I traveled a lot right now and post of endemic I don't know how
much travel requirements they would be because everything can
pretty much be done virtually and remotely. So at this stage, I'm not really traveling for
work. But in the past, I did travel. Okay, this is a great question for entry level
jobs. Some employers typically expect one year experience, so what will fall that gap? Okay.
Alright, so if you've been here for a while, you know, my gripe around entry level jobs and
the high requirement for experience in an entry level job that I don't necessarily agree with. But
if it's just one year of experience that an employer one's firstly, then bolding skills,
and demonstrating your skills would perhaps fall the gap of that one year experience that
you can't necessarily prove in the workplace. But you can prove that you have been working on
the different controls and tools it now I have shared some content, which I'll link again,
around platforms to use to build your skills depending on which space you want to go into in
cybersecurity. But the most important thing here is to build a professional network.
Because if you're building these skills, and you're not sharing the information with anyone,
you're not creating visibility for yourself, you're not sharing your knowledge and showing
your professional network that you can actually, you actually have these skills,
and you can use different tools and you can work on different platforms, then it is a no value,
you have to create visibility for yourself. So one of the things that I saw works really
well is if you can start a blog, write a blog, show and demonstrate your skills in the blog,
maybe do some videos of how you're using the different tools, etc.
Post that onto LinkedIn, and connect with other cybersecurity professionals on LinkedIn,
then that helps a lot with bridging that gap of the one year experience required
for entry level jobs. Okay, next question. How many hours do you work in a day? And
do you typically work overtime? Okay, so in my professional job, I work normal business hours.
So nine to five, typically, I have a break in the middle of my day, I go and I pick up my kids in
the middle of the day and I structure my day, so that I get the bulk of my work and my admin
done in the mornings and a lot of my critical meetings done in the mornings, so that I can
step out during lunchtime, go and fetch my kids and then come back in the afternoon and typically
spend time on less admin intensive work. That's how I structure my day. I typically
end the day at around 5pm Sometimes I will have educational goals, community calls, etc After
that done, but it's totally my own preference whether I want to attend those calls or not.
I typically attend them if we're not too busy at home for that day or if I've done
most things with the family for that day then I would otherwise, I would listen to the recordings.
So it is really not a my job is not an overtime working kind of job.
I would say though, in the past, when I was in security engineering and into the more
operation side of things, and into incident management and the head of incident response,
I would typically work long hours, if we had issues, so things were
down, then I wouldn't be working long hours. If we had a possible incident or a possible issue,
then typically, you get onto a call and you get up and you start investigating that and making sure
that you close out that issue as soon as possible, obviously, to eliminate any
possible threats in your environment. So in the incident response side,
perhaps in the security engineering analysis side, perhaps you will
experience longer, or after hours, not necessarily longer hours, but after hours, and then obviously
get compensated for the time, or get some time off the next day or the next week, etc.
And also to note in jobs where you cannot typically deploy stuff in production. So if you're
doing ethical hacking, and you cannot necessarily take a system with it during office hours,
then you would typically be working after hours and different kinds of hours. But for the most
part, it really is fine, and it is manageable. Okay. And then finally, this is the
final question that I will answer here. By the way, if you made it on the spot in the
video, please remember to give this video like and subscribe. And let me know in the comments below
if you like this kind of video. And if you would like to see more Q and A's here on YouTube. So
the final question is, degree, or certifications? Now I get this question a lot. I think I get the
question about once a day on Instagram. And it is really up to you. There are
different study paths to get into tech. And to get into cybersecurity, you can do a boot camp,
you can do a degree, you can do certifications. That is up to you. And it is your preference.
Here's how I would approach I would go and look at the potential jobs that I would want to apply for.
If you want to apply to be a security analyst or a security engineer,
then go and look at those roles and go and look at what the core requirements are for those roles.
A lot of organizations these days have updated those core requirements to ask for a degree or
relevant certifications, or experience. So the word or is very important day
because it has changed in recent times from end to or giving a lot more flexibility and
making it a lot more achievable for people who prefer different routes into the industry to
actually land the job. So that is really up to you getting a degree would help a lot.
Getting certifications is obviously great, and definitely my preferred
method. Doing a bootcamp is really really fantastic if you have a lot of time to spend
and if you want something that is intense, and that way you're obviously going to learn
and gain the knowledge fast, but you must keep in mind the costing that goes with a bootcamp.
But the number one thing, which doesn't matter which path you choose is to build your skills,
building your skills, and demonstrating your knowledge. That is really the
two components that sets you apart. No matter which path you choose, you
can choose to do a degree and not certifications but you can choose in parallel to your degree,
what you're learning during the time of taking your degree you can then go into the
different platforms and bolts of skills on the different platforms the same as certification,
you can build your skills and the same with a boot camp and network network network build your
professional network because that is ultimately if you want to get into this industry faster you
must be able to speak to people in the industry communicate with people in industry contact them,
shake your profile and your profile must demonstrate that you are cybersecurity
professional. That is so so important. All right friends, that is it for this
video. Remember to give it a like and I will catch you next time