Hey friends, welcome back to my channel. Today we'll discuss how you can streamline
your focus if you are looking to start your cyber security career. I'm Venicia. I'm the founder of
Cyber Queen, where it is my mission to enable and empower more women to succeed in cyber security.
I upload weekly videos sharing my industry knowledge and tips to help you
in your cyber security career journey. So if that's something you're interested in,
definitely hit that subscribe button, and don't forget to turn on the bell
notification so you can get notified every week when I upload a new video.
As always, we will start with your cyber security challenge for the week. So for this week,
I really want to challenge you to go and have a look at all your accounts and enable
multi-factor authentication, wherever possible. multi-factor authentication is the single
most important control in my opinion, that you can enable that can really really save you from
a cyber security attack. So let me know down in the comments below if you are
going to take up the challenge and go and enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
Alright, everybody, let's get straight into this video.
So when someone asks me, how do I get started in cyber security? I don't have
any technical knowledge. I don't know anything about cyber security, how do I actually start my
career training? My first response is usually to start by doing research. And I'm a very
big advocate of doing focused research. And so that's the advice that I would typically give.
But today, I want to discuss what that actually means. How do you do
focused research? And how do you streamline the research that you're doing and narrow it down
to find a particular focus area or a domain in cyber security that you're actually interested in?
So I want to backtrack a little bit. And I want to say that the first step is actually to know your
WHY. Get to know yourself and really understand why do you want a career in cyber security? Is it
because you heard it's an interesting field is it because it's, you know, a buzzword in the industry
right now, is it because you believe that, you can get a good high paying salary,
because you want remote working options, really, really know, define and understand
your specific "WHY". The reason that the why is so important is because once you know the
why and you're clear on the why, then the HOW becomes much easier. And even if along the line
you find that it is somewhat challenging, and you get faced with a lot of stumbling blocks.
Because you know your why and you are clear on your why it will not be difficult for
you to persist on your journey. So make sure you know the why upfront.
The second thing is really to define what cyber security is
for you. So there's a universal definition of cyber security, right.
So a simple definition, cyber security is the use of technology, the use of processes and people
skills to actually protect the flow of information and data from cybercriminals. To me specifically,
cyber security means that I can use my knowledge and my skills in order to protect people,
to protect people's businesses to protect people's data, and protect people's livelihoods. And that's
what cyber security means to me, personally. So define what cyber security means to you. And
know that definition because that will help you throughout your cyber security career journey.
Step number three would be to really research the industry,
get to know the industry get to know what cyber security is all about why is it such
a massive industry? What are all the job families within the cyber security industry? What are all
the role profiles and different profile options? What do cyber security professionals actually do?
What are the different kinds of cyber security professionals that there are really do extensive
and thorough research to get as much information as possible in order to arm you to be able to
make a better decision for your career and essentially your future? Cyber security is
not just ethical hacking. Ethical Hacking is one domain within the offensive security side.
And cyber security is 90% of the world outside of it. Ethical hacking. So know that, understand that
and understand the type of information that you're researching and uncovering about the industry.
Tip number four is to dig deeper and know your requirements. So now that you have, you have
a WHY, you have now gained knowledge about what cyber security is, you've defined it for yourself,
you have built a little map for yourself or a research project around what the industry is
all about. Now move towards understanding what you want to define your requirement. So this is
all about thinking long-term. Think of it this way, cyber security is going to be the career
path that you're going to follow for potentially the rest of your life. So what are your strengths?
Are you an analytical person? A person that's really really good at researching and getting
information? Are you a person that's good at managing projects? What do you like? That's very
important. Cyber security is or can be a really demanding career field. And so it's very, very
important that you do something that you like, so out of the research that you've done so far,
what is it that has piqued your interest? And, and what is it that you were really drawn towards,
and affect that for yourself, and at this stage, be completely honest with yourself,
and make sure that you know what it is that you like, and dislike about what you've done. And
note, you know, what are the top three or four focus areas on the top of your list.
And now the final step, so once you have made your list and you have the top three focus domains or
components, areas within cyber security that you want to focus now it is the point at which
you want to actually start your journey. At this stage, you have now clarified your WHY,
which is the most critical component, you have clarified what it is that you are interested in,
and now you need to unpack how, how are you going to get there? What are the educational
requirements, what are the certification requirements, and what are the skills that you
need to build in order to start your career in any one of those focus domains that you've selected?
And here, you really want to narrow it down, you want to get a basic understanding of cyber
security, you want to perhaps look at doing an introductory course into cyber security. It
can be a free course on Cybrary, And once you know the basics, you want to be able to build
specialized and focused skills into any one of the domains that you've selected. It's so important
that you build specialized and focused skills, because that really sets you up to get a
job in the field that you have specialized in. Rather than generalizing, you can always learn
more, once you're in the industry, you will always grow your skillset once you're in the industry.
As a cyber security professional, we learn every single day and we pivot within the industry.
And we have the opportunity to go to different spaces and learn more about different domains.
And that is definitely going to come down the line. But what you want to
do is you really want to make sure that you build solid skills, you get
solid certifications for the domains that you've selected
so that you can be eligible to get an entry-level job into the focus domain that you have selected.
All right, friends, so with those steps, I hope that that
helps you to be able to really streamline your focus and cover the world of cyber security,
while also defining what a career path and roadmap looks like for you.
Alright friends, that is it for this video. If you are struggling to
select a focus domain I will be doing an in-depth video about that next week.
So make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss out on that and
if you liked this video and you made it all the in please remember to leave a like
and comment because it really helps my channel out. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.