I currently work in cybersecurity in a Senior Incident Response role. Fair warning, my opinion is biased by my own route into cybersecurity and the fact that I deal with incidents and not managing people. Though, I do get involved in interviewing and hiring. I’d say you have a good start at it. While I am sure I will be accused of gatekeeping, I much prefer working with analysts who have spent time in help desk and even as a sysadmin/netadmin. It helps if you have a good understanding of how systems and networks work. I don’t expect new analysts to just jump into Wireshark and start reading through packets with me (I’m a weirdo who really enjoys that), but I will assume that I can talk, at a high level, about TCP/UDP, LDAP, SMB/CIFS, RDP or SSH and they won’t be completely lost. Though, no one is expected to know everything and we all have our weak spots; so, don’t be intimidated if any of that acronym soup isn’t instantly familiar. Everyone is Googling stuff constantly. You’ll memorize some of it due to repetition, but never be afraid to ask questions.

The last time my company was hiring for the SOC, the number one thing I was looking for in interviews was some evidence of an inquisitive mind. Someone geeking out over their home lab, TryHackMe or stuff like that was a sure-fire way to get my vote. I tend to be ambivalent about certs. I had some Windows 2000 certs (technically, those don’t expire, but ya…), a Sec+ (it’s expired) and an active CISSP (mile wide, inch deep, only useful for impressing hiring managers). I took a week long, in person training for the CEH but never took the test due to the COVID pandemic. Also, if the course (an official EC-Council course) was anything to judge by, that cert is just high-grade bullshit. I also have dealt with far too many “paper tigers” in my career to fall over swooning when someone has a bunch of alphabet soup behind their name. So, while I would recommend getting some certs, hiring managers love them, don’t get too caught up on them. You’ll learn far more just breaking stuff and troubleshooting it. The Net+/Sec+ duo is usually a good start.

On coding skills, I do recommend getting some ability to read/write code. The language isn’t super important. Python is a good one to have some literacy in, it gets used everywhere. But, unless you are going to push heavily into security development, you don’t need to be at the same level as a developer. If you can pop open exploits in exploit-db.com and make sense of what they are doing, and be sure the code isn’t going to root your test box, that’s usually enough.

Let me also recommend that you work to keep your communications/writing skills sharp. A lot of what one does in cybersecurity revolves around getting other people to do stuff. You will be regularly writing reports and needing to convince people to do stuff and/or explaining why you just kicked their system off the network. It really sucks to read incident reports from someone whose grasp of the language is lacking. Get in the habit of documenting what you do, taking screenshots, and writing in clear, concise language. You don’t need to be Shakespeare, but at least get your spelling right (spell check exists, use it), and get the basics of grammar down. If you hand me a resume with there/their/they’re mixed up, you’re going to walk into an interview with negative marks already against you.

On the upshot, now is a fantastic time to be getting into cybersecurity. Organizations are desperate to hire trained people and some will be willing to roll the dice on a less experienced analysts who shows potential. Feel free to ask questions, I enjoy what I do most days and am happy to talk about it.