How I Would Learn Cyber Security If I Could Start Over in 2024 (6 Month Plan)

this is the most important cyber security video that you will watch because I will show you exactly how I would land the cyber security job in 6 months if I had to start over without any Sears or degrees or any it experience I will show you how to build a saber security resume from scratch with a projects portfolio like this and I will even give you that resume to download for free so make sure you watch the video to the end because we will build it together in a way that will make you stand out

to hiring managers now I've been in the cyber security industry for over two decades but so much has changed since then and if I'm honest with you learning cyber security has never been more accessible than it is today you don't need overpriced degrees and you don't need to go to obscure internet forums and beg people for information like we did I even had to read hundreds of pages of Unix manuals just to get a tiny piece of information but fast forward to today and you have an abundance of training courses with Hands-On practical Labs that

cover pretty much everything that you need to learn a cyber security job and you can do it all from home from your laptop but this comes with a challenge as the amount of information available online can be overwhelming it's really hard to know where to start so let me show you how so let's imagine that I don't have any it knowledge and I'm starting from the absolute zero and I only have 6 months to land a job so I will follow five steps that if implemented correctly correctly will not only give you a cyber security

job in 6 months but it will also help you to level up as a professional you will stand out and you'll always have job opportunities coming your way even in times of recessions and layoffs starting with step number one foundation so if I had zero technical knowledge while I'm watching this video then this means I know how to turn on a computer therefore the best starting point for me will be the Google cyber security search it's a perfect start for someone with zero it knowledge it will ease you in the industry but more importantly it

will give you Hands-On practice with Linux Python and MySQL and having Hands-On skills is key to Landing your first cyber security job now I'm starting from scratch so I don't have any certifications but if you've done the compa Security Plus or isc2 Cc or the Microsoft saber security analyst set you can technically skip the Google cyber security set but in my opinion it's worth doing it will take you about a month or so give or take depending on how fast you learn but if you've done other stuff before then you'll finish it even faster there

is honestly no downside to doing this the Google cyber security search so just get it done I'll leave a link to it in the description box below and by the way when you finish it you get a 30% discount code to do the comps Security Plus which I definitely think you should take advantage of but if I want to landar a job in 6 months then I will personally skip the security Plus for now the Security Plus is a beginner level theoretical set it's good it will introduce you to some Concepts but if the goal

is to learn the job as fast as possible then your focus should be on gaming Hands-On skills that the jobs are asking for once you build some solid Hands-On skills then you can come back later and do the security plus if you really want to and it will make so much more sense because you'll actually understand the things that you're reading because you've done them in a lab remember which trying to land cyber security job our goal is not to spend 2 years building Foundation of multiple choice exams the goal is to land the cyber

security job in 6 months and we're trying to go straight to cyber security we're not trying to land the help desk job but without the next step you might be neglecting one of the most important aspects of Landing a cyber security job which is Step number two creating a resume or a CV I've seen this a lot I see candidates who clearly have spent time and money doing training and certification they've studied hard but when it come to creating a resume they treat it like an afterthought they literally spend 5 minutes on it now let

me tell you a secret people out there hiring managers and Company they can't know how amazing you are unless you let them know you need to Showcase your skills and you need to showcase the training that you've done and you need to put it in a professional way in a resume this is the only way that companies and hiring managers will know that you're serious about your career in cyber security now because of I'm starting from zero I don't even know what a resume or a CV is but thankfully Unix guy from the future has

created a free cyber security resume specially for you I'll put a link to it in the description box below but before you download it please make sure that you watch this video till the end because we will be building it together I will teach you how to edit that resume so you can tailor it to your own goals and using your own experience and training now the resume as it is it's really simple it will only have the gole cyber security se but I would personally add one line to mention the labs that are included

in the certificate this way if someone doesn't know the content of the certificate you let them know that you've had some practice with these tools now under the experience section for me it says receptionist because this is the work that I've done before I worked in cyber security for you this will be something completely different but what I want you to notice is under receptionist I didn't list each and every task that I've done as a receptionist instead I only added things that are relevant to my goal job so anything that's relevant to a cyber

security job and that could be interpersonal skills or communication skills or even simple work on the it system the purpose of the job experience section is not to list everything that you've done in your current job but to list the things that are relevant to your go job even if those things are 10% of what you did in your current job this is key this is a mistake I see over and over especially from from people who trying to change career for example if someone has been working as a nurse for the last 10 years

then don't add each and every detail about your nursing jobs instead just say that you worked as a nurse for 10 years list the names of the hospitals that you worked at and highlight your communication skills your patient care skills and even any work that you've done on the nursing it system for example this way we keep our resume brief but it's also highly targeted to a cyber security job but the real question is when should I start applying to cyber security jobs and the answer is now is the time even if I don't feel

that I have the confidence to apply to cyber security jobs I absolutely must start applying to cyber security jobs so the right time is after you finish the Google cyber security SE now can I get a job with only the Google cyber security SE the answer is yes it's possible but probably not there are few people in my Discord who landed the job with only the Google security Ser but they are the exception not the norm this person right here on the screen is the most recent one now the reality is yes it's really hard

to land a cyber security job only with the Google cyber security search but the point of applying to cyber security jobs is for you to start building your own confidence it's for you to hopefully be in an interview setting where you get to learn what companies are asking for but more importantly is for you to learn how to play the numbers game if you have two people with the exact same qualifications and the exact same resume one of them applies to three jobs whilst the other person applies to 300 jobs who do you think will

have a higher likelihood of Landing an interview the person who applied for three jobs got rejected then went then went on to Reddit to complain about how the market is so rough or the person who applied to 300 jobs and and continue their studying Journey anyway therefore if I want to landar a cyber security jobs in 6 months or less I need to start applying to cyber sec commity jobs every single day I should spend 30 minutes every day you don't need to spend any longer and just make it a habit of searching and applying

to cyber security jobs this is how I want you to search for cyber security jobs go to LinkedIn and filter for the word cyber then filter for the city that you live in and search for jobs and apply now depending on where you live there might be certain website that are applicable for you locally for example in the US there is Monster indeed and dice whil in Australia we have se but LinkedIn is universal so no matter where you live chances are cyber security jobs are also advertised in LinkedIn so I recommend you use LinkedIn

plus whatever is popular in your country now when you apply to cyber security jobs for the first time you will notice something confusing some jobs want you to be an ethical hacker whereas other jobs want you to conduct cyber security risk assessment both are completely different skill sets you will see that jobs are asking for a wide spectrum of skills and different specializations so how do we solve this problem should we specialize early on or should we try and learn everything at the same time well this my friend is one of the biggest problems that

you will face as you're trying to land your first cyber security job but the next tactic will make all the difference and it will solve this problem for you which is Step number three become a generalist the idea is to cast a wide net meaning gain a broad set of skills so you can qualify for for the maximum number of cyber security jobs advertised but to really understand why I want you to understand the difference between small and big companies from my experience in cyber security Consulting where I work with both small and large organizations

the main difference that I see is this big companies usually need to hire individuals who are highly specialized for example they may have someone who specializes in application security and perhaps they'll have one individual or a group of individuals who only do incident response or only do threat management or they only specialize in spun whereas small to mediumsized organizations they can't afford this luxury so usually they need to hire one person who can do so many things so they want that person to be able to do cyber security risk assessments read vulnerability management reports analyze

and respond to fishing attacks and at least be able to interpret penetration testing reports this is very common in the industry therefore if I wanted to get a cyber security jobs in 6 months or less I need to maximize the number of jobs that I can qualify for I will aim to First be a generalist learn a little bit about everything and then later specialize and go deep in one or two areas and you can always specialize after you learn your first cyber security job now the way to become a generalist is definitely not by

collecting multiple choice based certifications and exams instead if you want to be a top 1% candidate you'll need to differentiate Yourself by adding broad spectrum of practical skills that are applicable to so many different jobs to do that we will need to add non-technical cyber security skills which we collectively refer to as GRC GRC stands for governance risk and compliance and for GRC you don't need to look further than GRC Mastery I designed it in such a way that the course will give you the practical skills that the job market is asking for without any

fluff or any nonsense I looked at the training courses available in the market and I found that they didn't really teach you what the job market is asking for so I solved this problem for you in GC Mastery the course has each module in the course has a practical assessment but more importantly at the end of the course there is a large Capstone project that you can add to your resume as you build up your portfolio now GRC Mastery on average will take you a month and a half to 2 months to finish just a

caveat with GC Mastery you're meant to watch the videos at least two times and you're meant to take notes because a lot of the topics will be new to you and the idea is not to finish it as fast as possible but to absorb the knowledge in the course so you can be confident in an interview setting and you can demonstrate your knowledge to hiring managers I talked about GC Mastery in detail in this video where I did a deep dive on each module so please check it out now this is how I will add

the skills that I gained from GC Mastery to the resume and suddenly our resume looks so much better and we can qualify for so many more jobs now because GC Mastery has a Capstone project so I will add a section in the resume called practical projects and I'll add one bullet points describing the Capstone practical project that I did in GC Mastery now I know some people like to add their practical portfolio or projects to GitHub you can definitely do that I personally don't do it I think GitHub is more appropriate for professionals who do

coding and programming for a living for cyber security not so much I only recommend it to people who do programming within cyber security or who created specific coding programming tools that are used for cyber security so we can skip GitHub for now now I will continue to apply to jobs for at least 30 minutes every day and some of you will definitely find the job at this point we will be 2 and 1 half months to 3 months into our journey now assuming you haven't found a job yet the next skill that I want to

add to our resume is vulnerability management there are tools in the industry that we refer to as vulnerability scanners they they scan systems to try and find weaknesses and they will generate a report that details those weaknesses so the IT team can fix those vulnerabilities now in GRC Mastery you will actually know what vulnerability management is and when and why we perform it but this particular free training from qualis will show you how to use qualis which is a really prominent tool that we use in the industry so this will give you a chance to

practice with the tool for free you can finish this training in 1 week or 2 weeks maximum now there are more free training courses from qualus you can do them later but if my goal is to land the job as fast as possible I will skip them for now and this is how I will add the qualus training to the resume it will just be one simple line item that says that I finished qual vulnerability Management training a common mistake that I see is people add the training but then they create another section they call

it skills and they copy paste the same thing so they have vulnerability management and then vulnerability management again as a skill I personally don't recommend that we need to be strategic about how we use space in our resume if you mention it once you don't need to repeat it at this point we're halfway through our journey we're 3 months in and chances are some of you will landar the cyber security job at this point things will start to look a lot clearer but to build even more confidence so we can smash that first interiew the

next training course that we will do is from try hack me there are so many other training platforms out there but the reason why I picked try hackme is because it's really beginner friendly and it can get you those skills that we want really fast the first course that I want you to do from tryhackme is the sock one course this will give you the practical skills that will enable you to work as a security analyst in a security Operation Center or even as a generalist you will learn how to analyze security incidents and how

to respond to them this course will take you one or 2 months it depends on how fast you learn which means you will be 4 months in your journey now in the next step we will take a little bit of a break from doing certifications but we will add even more practical work to our resume which is Step number four virtual internships those are free mini projects available to you that you can do and you can add to your resume and they are from some of the biggest companies in the world and the crazy thing

is they are completely free you have no reason not to do all of them there are a total of nine virtual internships each one of them will take you 1 to 2 hours in total it will take you 20 hours to finish but the good thing about them is that a lot of these topics will be like a review for you you'll find that you've learned most of these topics in GC Mastery and in try hack me stock one now the forage will also teach you how to add those virtual internships to your resume I'll

leave a link to this in the description box below I will not do this for you because I want you to learn how to do it yourself so you can have that skills of creating and modifying resumes now the next step in my opinion is where the real fun begins which is Step number five intermediate level training you're in the final month or two of your journey and this is where things will get a lot more serious we need to pick an intermediate level Hands-On practical training and we need to do it as we do

it we should continue to apply to jobs the idea is as you do training you apply to jobs you finish that training you update your resume you apply to more jobs if you learn the job fantastic you've reached your goal if not then you need to pick another certification do it apply for jobs again rinse and repeat until you reach your goal this way it's really impossible to fail if you do these courses if you put in the time if you actually apply to jobs consistently there is no reason why you can't reach your goal

now the courses that I recommend in no particular order are from try hack me you can do the Cyber defense course or the sock2 course or you can do hack the Box CD SA or Blue Team level one these are all great pick one run with it apply to jobs if you reach your goal great if not rinse and repeat until you reach your goal there are other courses that are also great like from let's defend and cyber Defenders they all touch on the same topics so pick the one that you like and run with

it and run with it until you reach your goal now if you reach this far in this video then there is a bonus step for you and in my opinion it will make all the difference for your journey as cheesy as it may sound but it's really important to have fun and enjoy the journey I don't want you to be constantly stressed out as you study this is not the goal here the goal is for you to treat this like a mission a really important mission that your life depend on because at the end of

this Mission you will change your life and there is no reason why this Mission can't be fun now a great way to have fun in this journey is to try and go to cyber security events and meet to cyber security events and conferences you don't need to go to expensive ones you can simply Go to meetup.com and search for cyber security events in your area I also recommend you go to Google and you type bides and then the name of your city bides is a cyber security conference that's usually cheap I highly recommend that you

go to these conferences because it's a good chance for you to meet other people who are on a similar Journey but you never know you might get a job from these events in fact one of our Discord members landed her first cyber security job through someone she met in a bsides event so this could be you now if you want a deep dive into GC Mastery which is an essential part of this plan then please go and watch this video because I broke down each module of GRC Mastery in detail and I'll see you there