My choice as a cybersecurity specialist as a woman ❤
only 11% of cybersecurity professional are women
What does “STEM” mean?
STEM is a common abbreviation for four closely connected areas of study: science, technology, engineering and mathematics
Why is the role you chose an important one in STEM fields?
Software developer is important in STEM fields because is related with computer science and how we can use our programming skills to create better digital solutions in the world.
Particularly, I like the cybersecurity area that is vinculated with networking, low-level programming, etc. In this area, it involucres ethics, programming skills, etc.
Also, I am a women and I represent the 16% of STEM professional so I want to have a good performance, break paradigms and help to increase this number
What makes this position interesting and unique?
There a lot of reasons but I can mention:
First, Cybersecurity is important work that makes difference:
Attacks can negatively impact every aspect of our lives that’s why, cybersecurity roles are highly important. The work of a cybersecurity engineer is a critical part of a greater mission that keeps something or someone secure. And because of that, being part of this mission is what makes cybersecurity role fun and enjoyable.
Second, there are a lot of opportunities to advance and grow
On one hand, it can be difficult or even brutal to keep up with all of the new technology, breaches, updates, and changes that occur on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. But on the other hand, the consistent change of new technology means that there is always a new skill or specialization that is available to learn and become proficient with.
Third, with cybersecurity is a new adventure
This is my favorite reason I could choose again this specialization. As a cybersecurity professional, you may find that there are many facets to your job. At one moment, you may feel like a detective completing forensic investigation work on a breached system or researching a problem. The next day you may feel more like a network technician, diagnosing typical problems and providing customer service to network users. Or in different scenario you may feel like an analyst, providing cybersecurity advice to a manager, business owner, or client. Different tasks in the cybersecurity field provide variety in the job, and this is what some cybersecurity pros find enjoyable.
Also, when I was starting my path in cybersecurity, I started trying little challenges, then I participated in CTF and this is really enjoyable and fun, if someone is interested in take this specialization and want to try a little of it. I can recommend to subscribe to a CTF tournament or a web pages like hackthebox to improve you skills ;)
Fourth, It’s challenging
I think this is a personal reason that I choose cybersecurity because I love the problems that test my skills, I love the difficult and challenging work instead of a rutine work. Being a cybersecurity engineer, most of the time you will need to face with new things and you need to know that in if the case you don’t know how to solve in this moment, you could be sure that you will be able to learn it and how to figure out. And that’s mean, have the security of your skills.
Finally, cybersecurity specialization have a nice community
If you want to specialize on it, I can recommend to subscribe to the cybersecurity group of your school and be an active member. If your school doesn’t have one. Don’t panic, there are several communities, for example in signal, discord, etc. Also, we can have the challenge and community of hack the bock or groups that are studying for a certification.
What makes this role similar to others?
The knowledges that cybersecurity needs to know. To protect a enterprise, we need to know all the concepts and software vulnerability that a company can have. That’s why is difficult but at the same time, challenge for me. Because, I love computer science and I like to take this position to defend it
What specific programming languages and tools could one expect to work with in this position?
In my experience, python is the most used because you can use for a lot of things, also, you need to be a master in networking and using os (I love kali-debian linux distribution for it) , scripts on shells is very common and if you know low-level programming like C and assembly you can have more to choose in this specialization. I can recommend this youtube channel if you want to learn more about networking and how to apply in cybersecurity: NetworkChunk
Also, I can recommend certificates and read several books like OSINT , CEH
What is an example of a problem or a challenge someone in this role could solve or be asked to work on?
There are three teams in cybersecurity and the challenge will depend of the team that the person will choose. In the next imagine you can see the three teams and what kind of work they will need to do.
But for example, for a cybersecurity professional with focus in web, they can take a “blue team” and they will to do the Infrastructure security of the networking of a company ( for example, decide how many servers, they will need, load balancer, firewalls and SSL, backup, monitoring, etc)
What are some positives and negatives about this position?
The positive is all the good reasons that I mentioned before, for me the most important it is that is challenging, and I love challenges ❤.
In negatives, I want to mention 2:
- Personally, if you are not working for a big companies, You will have less specialization options.
- I think this is a common negative in the professionals is that you need to be really good as a software developer, that’s means, that you need to love study and be a fast learner. But actually, you can see this negative like a challenge too ;)
Finally, I want to finish recommended a roadmap if you want to choose this specialization:
Like you see, if you are starting you can start with networking and software development, then go to be a cybersecurity specialist and continuing in the mid-level and finally in an advance-level ;)
Finally, for this specialization more than the courses, it is more important the certification, in this link you can find each certification associate with the level and specialization that you want to have like a cybersecurity professional. I hope you really enjoy the lecture and be part of a this specialization too ;)
