A Semester in Cyber

Hi Guys 🙂

My apologies for the hiatus.

Life has been moving extremely fast. This year has taught me that with desire, preparation, and a plan, everything will open up. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities coming my way. In terms of my cybersecurity capabilities, this is just the beginning. I have solidified that cybersecurity is the field for me to flourish.

Looking back at last summer, May 2023 was when I realized that cybersecurity was my path to challenging myself constructively. I never thought I had the perfect mindset and traits for this field until now. With a lot of time at hand, I aim to be wise in how I apply it.

This segment of my journey has been focused on learning—on the job, as a TA for the CodePath CYB102 course, through podcasts (Darknet Diaries and CYBERWOX are favorites), hacking books, and various mediums to understand hacking culture and identify my specialization.

I’ve realized the importance of planning. Disorganized efforts won’t maximize my time. I think that being unorganized and seeing the result of that for long enough have driven me to that. Planning is going to be really important if I want to make sure my larger projects are a true reflection of my abilities. Practical experience independently, without risking trouble. Building a community around cybersecurity seems like the right step.

There’s no cybersecurity club at my college, which presents a new thing to build on. My mission for next school year is to cultivate a cybersecurity culture, starting a club to work on educational aspects of the Security+ for the school year. I want to create a group studying, labs, and projects to reinforce concepts. In other schools with a Cybersecurity major or just any major focused on networking and security, they have the advantage of already having course work to build on. But because my institution doesn’t, I figured the Security+ would be a good start to base the projects on and build off of that.

Aside from that, I need to ensure my networking foundational understanding is up to par. First, I will study for the CCNA with the same kind of lab – content protocol because understanding networks is fundamental to securing them. By the end of the summer, I will strive to sit for the actual exam. It might be odd to want to do the CCNA first but it is directly because I was advised to get a grasp on networking. I also recognize that I need more practice in this area. Though I can find answers to work-related queries, I want to develop an intuitive understanding of networking issues.

My approach is to learn in theory and then by doing. Typically, the “doing” has been my work as an IT Security Analyst or small ideas I want to try out on my system. By next school year, I aim to add certifications and personal pentesting or honeyports to my repertoire. I’m becoming more comfortable with Linux and the command line, ready to embark on pentesting projects solo.

I’ve solidified my desire to become more of an Engineer, which may entail pursuing an Engineering master’s alongside Data Science undergraduate, perhaps the masters will be in Information Systems Security or Computer Engineering.

I urge you all to just figure out what drives you. Then put all of the gas there. All of the focus there. It seems so internally rewarding to me, so I know that this must be the right path for me to go into. The sky is the limit my fellow comrades.

Until next time,

Fallyn

Side bar: If anyone from the Claremont colleges wants to align with the Cybersecurity Club’s mission, let’s connect.