Look, I am not the nicest mentor or the wisest or the most experienced or whatever. But I have been at this infosec for 25+ years & I've done quite a lot by my standards FWIW. I am here to tell you that some of you are trying to bite off way more than you can chew. Wisdom
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comes w/ age, you'll learn in due time to pace yourself or you'll simply burn out. You decide which route you take. Try this exercise:
1. Create a list, call it a 5-year plan.
2. Jot down some career/life goals (Sec+, CISSP, OSCP, whatever).
3. Now spread them out over the
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next 5 years into small, manageable chunks. (E.g., Obtain Security+ce cert, how do you accomplish this goal?
a. Read entire study guide
b. Complete all available online practice tests
c. Practice flashcards
d. Sked/Pass cert test (i.e., there's no attempt- you're passing!)
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4. Go back to 2020 & cross out a few goals b/c this year is a wash due to COVID-19. Be lenient on yourself during this stressful time, lots of unknowns. It is a good time to concentrate on studying for new certs, distance learning, learning new coding languages but don't
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overdo it w/ your goal setting. Some of you want to go from beginner to master hacker/security pro in like 12 months. Yeah, that's not happening. Sorry to break it to you champ, but it's going to take years to become well-experienced in this field. Are there exceptions? Sure.
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6. Is your goal to break into infosec? Ok, well if so then how can you chunk that up into small, measurable goals that are realistically accomplishable? Are you already in IT & if so, can you just pivot over to ITsec with a Sec+ or OSCP/CEH/Pentest+ type of cert depending on
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within the community like @DfirDiva or @Brett_Shavers that are helpful & can point you in the right direction. You'll notice that I re-Tweet a lot of the articles I publish b/c some of them help answer questions some folks have that might be considering a career in IS.
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Lastly, I can't stress this enough. Slow the fuck down! You're not going to accomplish anything if you stress yourself out to the point of becoming useless to yourself or others who depend on you. Factor in healthy doses of downtime. Space your goals out. #MentalHealth
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You can follow @z3roTrust.
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