Over 12 years in cybersecurity, and oh boy, thinking of some of the
things that I regret actually made me cringe. So today, I will be talking about some of my
most serious regrets while working through my cybersecurity career journey.
And some of these things are so simple yet, so overlooked.
Hi, Friends, welcome or welcome back. I'm Venicia, let's get into this video.
Okay, so definitely the first regret could have saved me so much time, so much heart ache,
so much energy, really. And it is simply just having the confidence to ask enough questions.
Now, you know, when starting out in a new journey, it is even more complicated when you are in a job.
And you're the only woman in a room sitting there. And there's all these professionals
and they know what they're talking about. And you sit there with that inferior feeling of
I don't want to ask because maybe it's silly question. But in my experience,
someone else in the room would eventually end up asking something that's similar to what you would
have asked, and then that answer is shared with that bit of information and guidance is shared or
no, and asks the question, and then you leave out of there, and you have to go and do the research.
And I would have to go and find the answers. But what that takes is it takes a lot of time,
it takes a lot of effort, energy, but still, I would sit with the mindset that I'm not
really sure if that was the right answer. And that was such a silly thing to do. And
it is really something that I regret, because one thing I've learned in this industry is that people
are willing to help, there is no one that is not willing to help you and to share information.
It is a collaborative space. No person knows everything about cybersecurity,
no matter how long they've been in the industry. So asking the questions,
trust me, will save you so much time and so much energy and so much confusion in the long run. So
save yourself that time and ask questions doesn't matter how silly it seems, it doesn't matter how
senior the person in the room is. If you have a question, right now,
these days, it's virtual, unmute your mic and ask your question, or type it in the chat box
and ask it trust me, that is a regret that could have saved me so much time and energy.
Just ask your question. Okay. The second one I wish that I would have learned earlier on. And
that is actually learning the fundamentals of PowerShell. Now, I've made a few videos,
which I will link up in terms of understanding the basics of cybersecurity, what's important,
what are some of the core fundamentals, etc. But one thing that I personally wish that I would
have learned early on is the core fundamentals of PowerShell PowerShell scripting, and then
continue to use PowerShell in my everyday life, because PowerShell is such a core fundamental
way of doing things. And especially as I've progressed in my career, I mean, I have now
learned some of the basics of PowerShell. And I can run some PowerShell scripts,
and you know, I can deploy certain things using PowerShell, etc.
But it would have been so much easier if I learned PowerShell early on,
because then I would have saved myself a lot of time with extracting information,
especially from places like Active Directory from the windows, always from user management, etc.
And PowerShell is also highly utilized with deploying scripts, etc, into
the Azure Cloud. So that is one of my regrets is that maybe coding is not that much required?
Back I definitely wish that I would have gained more traction in the use of PowerShell throughout
my career journey, especially for those who want to become hands on technical and
who want to do security analysis and security engineering. Learning PowerShell early on can
save you a ton of time and a ton of effort because scripting is the way to go. Okay.
Then this one is so so important. And this one is one that I really want everybody To
be clear, taking certifications and firstly, failing the exam
first time around is not the end of the world. I wish I would have known that I wish I would have
had more courage to not be so discouraged when I decided to take a certification and I failed
the exam, which has happened to me. And it was so discouraging. And
for one of them, I just didn't go ahead and go and rewrite the exam. Now granted, in the future
state of my career, I don't actually regret not rewriting that certification, because I don't need
it for the role that I'm in at the moment or for any of the other roles that I progressed through.
But taking certifications don't deter or avoid taking certifications. If you have failed,
there is always another chance, you can always retake the exam, prepare again and get up to
scratch with some of the gaps that you would have had in what you were studying prior to that exam.
And understand where the difficult points are and retake the certificate, it is not the end of the
world. If you fail, an exam fell forward, use it to your benefit to what you have learned the
insights you have gained from the exam experience and go for it and write that exam. Again, I wish
I would have known that it is not such a major thing to fail a certification exam,
it is not major, you can just book the exam again, prepare again and rewrite that exam.
Okay, then, one of the key things within the tech industry and within cybersecurity
is definitely to explore more and to move around more. And this is one of the regrets that
that I have had early on in my career, I didn't necessarily move around as much as I should have.
And so stay in for too long in one particular role can be a bit miss conceiving or preconceived
that you actually know more than what you do about the industry. Now stay with me here.
If you are a security engineer for five years, perhaps you moving from a junior
engineer to an intermediate engineer to a senior engineer. But here's the thing,
you are only operating in the one domain of security engineering, and you don't actually know
anything else that is going on in in all of the other domains of cybersecurity.
So one of the core things that I really do regret is not moving around and dabbling
around in the early stages of my career. So in the earliest stages of my career,
I did Security Engineering, and I did it for quite a while for a number of years.
And if I had at that stage moved into analysis, or tried governance, or consulting, etc,
then maybe my journey to acceleration would have been even faster than what it has been. Now,
I don't have any complaints, I have explored many spaces within cybersecurity.
But that is definitely something that I would say I would have changed
early on if I knew how massive broad and dynamic this industry is in cybersecurity, like 18 months
to two years in one role is probably all you need to be able to explore that drop. Now
there are some people that are in a role. They love that role, and they just want
to progress in that particular space. So if you are in security engineering,
and you want to be an engineer, and you just want to progress in that space, then great.
Do what works for you. But if you're somebody that wants to explore this
industry and move to different places, etc, then don't sit around for too long, like
move around, as soon as you've got the grasp and the handle on on the role that you're in and gain
experience in the role that you're in 18 months to two years is probably a good time for you to move
around and explore a whole different domain and a whole different area of work within cybersecurity.
And of course, when you move around, you also elevate your career because you add
in more skills to your portfolio and you get more money. Okay. And then I think
the final thing that I definitely regret doing especially early on in my career is thinking,
thinking that I must do everything myself and I must save the whole digital universe
on my own. That's probably an overstatement. But here's the fact there's an entire team of IT
professionals, cybersecurity professionals, business professionals that work together to
solve the problem of cybercrime. You have a specific component of that problem,
and you do not need to do everything yourself. Don't do everything yourself and overwork yourself
and tried to over overcompensate and spend hours and hours and hours trying to find one piece and
one bit of information, it can get really, really tedious, it can get really, really daunting.
And I remember in the earliest stages of my cyber security engineering career,
I would go through hours and hours and hours of vulnerability assessment reports and data
and try and match it up against systems etc. So you don't have to do everything on your
own. You can work with different teams, you can delegate things to different people,
take the portion of work that you are comfortable with taking up and solve
that problem in to end and then move to the next problems don't add more things on your plate, then
what you can handle because burnout is a real thing. And burnout in this industry is real.
There's already too few professionals to fill up all the roles and therefore we already doing
more than what then a lot of people in other industries and in other job roles.
And so what that if you still take on more and more on top of that and think that you're
you need to solve this problem on your own, you will experience burnout and is not a fun thing.
So definitely my biggest regret is not knowing my limits in terms of what I can take on not managing
my workload effectively and then experiencing burnout numerous times. You can still achieve
a lot in this industry and you can still be an overachiever and accelerate your career with out
taking on too much, putting yourself under too much pressure and experiencing burnout.
Alright friends, if you made it to the end of this video, then
please leave a like because clearly you enjoyed this content and subscribe to my channel for more
cybersecurity content. Catch you next time