I have earned my first industry certification! It is the Certified in Cybersecurity certificate. Let me explain why this is a big accomplishment for me.
My path into cybersecurity, like those of so many others, was a crooked trail to cybersecurity. My bachelor’s is in computer science and I spent years as a programmer analyst and then on an incident response team. I went to graduate school and spent time working in industry and teaching. I did not have any classes or formal training in a cybersecurity degree program. I picked it up as I went along. I would watch online videos or take free online courses. It was only after I volunteered to teach an introduction to cybersecurity class that I took a train-the-trainer class in cybersecurity. It was basically a bootcamp on how to teach an introduction to cybersecurity class, the how-to and the content.
Because of this patchwork background I have, I feel a need to prove to myself and everyone else that I really do understand this stuff. I am confident in my knowledge, but it means something when someone else recognizes my expertise. A certification is a formal and public type of recognition. It feels great to have it.
My little story gives insight into the professional journeys of many other people. It is far more common to meet someone in cybersecurity who started in another field and wound their way through various positions before they landed in cyber. That means there are a lot of us who picked up cybersecurity on the fly. When you think about it, this makes sense. Cybersecurity is a fairly new field. Most universities are still building their cybersecurity courses even if they are only for general education and not majors. The profession has not reached its full maturity. I believe we are still many years off before it does.
Until then, people with patchwork backgrounds who did not start their careers in cybersecurity will continue to be the norm in the profession. In order to fill the over three-quarters of a million open positions in cybersecurity, hiring managers are going to need to recognize this. To have an expectation of five years of experience for entry-level positions is unrealistic. Even recent college graduates who have been completing internships cannot accumulate that level of experience. Certifications like the CC are a great option for providing evidence about how much you know without the massive investment of time and effort that other certifications require.
And to wrap it all up with a bow…I’ve earned my first cert!
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