How to Start a Cybersecurity Blog
Part 2: Getting Content
Check out the Dad joke free part 1 here.
So now that you’re a “fan” of blogging…what should you write about? If you checked out part 1, the biggest goal is to build a portfolio of experience that you can show potential future employers. With that in mind…let’s set out to explore some content areas that can help you get building that portfolio!
Home Labs
Wait…what’s a “home lab”? Only the greatest thing since the flash drive! (Bonus points if you can blog about how you setup a home lab on a flash drive)
Basically, a home lab is a computer network (physical or virtual) that you use to test out things your curious about. It’s a development lab for your burgeoning IT career. It’s where you can break things…repair them…break them again…then find a new repair! In a sense…it’s LEGOs for IT!
Here’s a rough outline of potential blog posts:
- Building the lab (or a series of blogs)
- How you back up and reset the lab
- Experiments in the lab (maybe this you try out this new Windows 10 PoC)
- Expanding your lab network
- Automating deployment of new lab machines
- Moving the lab to the cloud!
Here’s some examples of Home Lab blogs:
Building a Reasonably Priced Virtual Home Lab (also a Medium example)
CTFs/Boot to Root VMs/Other Technical Blogs
This is probably the biggest category of content for cybersecurity focused students. And also arguably the best way to really show you have a passion to learn and build your experience up. These are typically very technical, listing commands, outputs, scripts, tools, etc. In lieu of potential blog posts, I’ll give plenty of examples.
CTFs (Capture the Flag)
This are events that typically present a Jeopardy style question and answer format. Blogs posts tend to revolve around how you solved the challenges and the methods you used to attack the challenges you couldn’t solve.
Examples:
Boot to Root and Vulnerable VMs
These blogs are typically focused on the methods and tools used to gain system/root access on a virtual machine. Again, very technical and detailed posts. People looking to break into penetration testing will find these blog posts to be useful. Vulnhub, Juiceshop, and HackTheBox are just a few of the sites that host or have available VMs for hacking.
Examples:
https://www.absolomb.com/HackTheBox/
Other Blogs and Technical Posts
Maybe you read a great post on a fellow IT professional’s blog. Perfect! Take that post…credit the original creator…then expand upon what they did!
Examples:
Homework — Answer part 1 QVRDQ0dlbkN5YmVy
The above is great…and I want to blog about those eventually, but I don’t have time between school/work/life at the moment. Well, assuming you’re a student, have I got a deal for you! In fact…a DOGO!! Do One, Get One on homework assignments and blog posts.
WAAAIIIITTTT! Before you jump into creating posts about your courses homework, you’ll need to clear this in writing with your instructor if you want to include specific portions of the homework.
Otherwise, bring out the concepts. Or expand on the content and explore something above and beyond the subject of the homework. Let’s use the basic setting up your first virtual machine homework as an example.
Assignment: Use VMWare’s Workstation Player to create an Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine.
Potential Blog Posts:
- How I used Hyper-V/VirtualBox to create an Ubuntu VM
- Exploring the VMX File Settings on my Ubuntu VM
- Creating a Gold Template using Ubuntu and VMware
But how did you come up with those ideas?? The always reliable Google! Pick some key terms from your assignment and Google the terms. Look for something interesting and start writing about what you find.
Some additional topics that can become blog posts:
- What I learned from <insert course here> (careful to keep these types of blogs professional)
- How to start a study group with your classmates (or pros and cons of study group formats)
- Final projects (again…ask your instructor/professor for permission if using anything specific to the project…ie posting what the assignment is asking/graded on)
Daily Life
Okay, so I’m serious…no time between work/school/life…like ZERO time…and school’s a struggle right now so I don’t feel comfortable about posting about any of my school stuff. But I really want to do well and get into IT…is there any hope for me?
YES!
That’s the best part of blogging. It’s a stream of consciousness format that gives potential employers a look into how you operate. Plus, you control and can shape that view by the content you post!
Daily life really boils down to content that you do in your normal daily activities. Everyone in IT started on some electronic device…no one was born able to troubleshoot every issue ever seen with printers!
With that said…here’s some potential topics:
- How I fixed my grandma’s infected PC
- How I fixed my grandma’s infected PC…again
- Seriously grandma…stop clicking on the link! (a phishing focused post)
- Okay grandma, I’m revoking your PC privileges and giving you back the hand held Solitaire
- …Grandpa’s clicking the links now
Okay so that’s a series of posts on how you cleaned a PC and trained your grandparents not to click on email scams (phishing emails).
Here’s some more general ideas:
- How you fixed a phone/PC issue
- How you fixed your work’s IT issue
- I read news story “X”…here’s my research
- How I fixed my home PC/Game console
Great! I think I have an idea for my first post…but I’m terrible at writing. Any tips?
Why thanks for asking…I have a few! Take them or leave them over here at part 3!
