What cybersecurity skills should you learn FIRST? 👩🏻‍💻💡

What cybersecurity skills should you learn FIRST? 👩🏻‍💻💡

Here are the top five I recommend starting out with as you get familiar with cybersecurity tooling: 

1. 💻Networking & OS Foundations: This is the foundational knowledge for all IT/Cybersecurity professionals. Understanding how networks operate and how operating systems function will be essential for identifying vulnerabilities and securing systems against attacks. Also a great chance to add 2-3 network security tools to your resume when you’re just starting out! 

2. 🔎 Using an SIEM: An SIEM is one of the core systems that security teams rely on to keep an organization safe because it provides real-time visibility into network activity for incident response teams. A great place to start is with the ELK Stack since it’s open-source and allows you to get hands-on implementing software and understanding how SIEMs function. The Google Cybersecurity Cert (http://imp.i384100.net/k0R0rz) is a great beginner course that covers SIEMs in detail.

3. ⚙️ Common Security Frameworks and Standards: I’ve already mentioned my thoughts on GRC and its growth in the age of AI which I’m very optimistic about 👀, but security frameworks provide best practices for protecting information and managing risks. Get familiar with common security frameworks and standards (e.g., NIST, ISO 27001, PCI, etc.) so when you (inevitably) assist in an ongoing audit, you’ll be familiar with what’s expected. 

4. ☁️ Cloud Security: Many of the biggest cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) have free training that you can take advantage of considering how many organizations are currently using or moving towards using cloud infrastructure. I’d go through all the free training that you can so you can get familiar with their tooling as well as the differences between platforms (sometimes they also provide free exam vouchers too!)

5. ✍️ Technical Writing: When a pentester completes a pentest, the pentest report is the final product. When an SOC analyst resolves an incident, they document everything in a retrospective. This isn’t one of the most glamorous skills out there so it’s definitely an area that lots of technical folks tend to overlook, but that doesn’t make it any less important. 

Have a great rest of your week!

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