My 6 Month Journey Towards Cybersecurity

If you look through entry level cybersecurity positions, you’ll see companies want a minimum of 3 to 5 years of experience. How do you do this? You’ve been working helpdesk and desktop support for 4 years now? The gap between lower-level IT into mid-level IT seems to be huge for someone that’s trying to get there.

I’ve been on this journey for a few years. In 2020, I passed the CompTIA Security+, then worked on some homelabs and studied for other certifications. Even though I was working hard, I didn’t do what needed to be done to get into the field. I failed to document my homelabs and I didn’t have my priorities straight, I went down the path that most appealed to me. From experience, it’s not the way. Everything online says “pursue a certification!” but how are you supposed to understand what’s being tested on if you don’t have the experience? Do some digging into Reddit and you’ll find many posts about getting experience rather than a certification. As I was in college, I failed to understand the real world — that employers want you to be able to do the work not just the credential. I looked through the job postings of the places I want to work and adapted myself to their work. Juniper is used at the organization I work for so I got the JNCIA-Junos. Still, that’s not enough, I needed the experience. I told myself I want to recreate my home network. I have hardly any…