How to start a career in cyber security (or anything else)

I was asked again today by someone just starting out, how to start a career in cyber security. What did I do, and should they do the same?

The answer: Don’t follow my path.

My path has so far taken me through landscape gardening, accountancy, financial audit, internal audit, computer and data forensics, politics, computer audit, risk analytics, financial regulation, fintech, and cyber security. It’s taken me through the private and public sector and sectors that don’t seem to have a name, through great companies and shockingly awful ones, to the top of mountains and sometimes straight down a precipice at the other side.

Very little of it was planned.

The direct path is certainly faster — but it’s only faster if you know where you’re going, why you need to be there, how to get there, and how you’ll recognise it when you do.

And I’d suggest that if you really know all that before you set out, it might not be the most interesting journey, and when you do get there you might not know what to do next.

So pick your own path, one you think you’ll learn from. The people you are with and how you treat them matters more than you ever realise, but where you get to doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think.

Looking around and saying ‘where am I right now, and where can I go from here that might be interesting’?

That’s somewhere you can start from every day.

Good luck.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Stories by Matt Palmer on Medium authored by Matt Palmer. Read the original post at: https://matt-palmer.medium.com/how-to-start-a-career-in-cyber-security-or-anything-else-32c90135f645?source=rss-ca0fc895d58b------2