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Thoughts on Being Asked “How Do I Get Into Infosec?”

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Submitted By akolashinski
Words 1490
Pages 6
So You Want To Get Into INFOSEC Huh?
I got a request through a friend for a friend of that friends kid to talk to him about how to get into INFOSEC the other day. Now usually I am a curmudgeon (as you all know and love) and am loathe to be some sort of big brother of INFOSEC to anyone but in this case I said ok cuz I am just that nice. After some email wrangling we finally got together today (scant minutes ago actually) and now feel an obligatory blog post on the subject of getting into the business coming on …And there it is …Feel the burn…
So after agreeing to a time to meet I began to wonder just what I would say to this kid as to how to get into the business. For that matter I really wondered if I should encourage him at all to get into INFOSEC in the first place. My mind started to ponder why I was in it still and just how if at all it was rewarding given all that I have seen and still deal with on a daily basis. Often times my daily job sends me in to apoplectic fits that you all see in my blog posts and on twitter screeds of 140 characters at a clip so I imagine all of you out there might not think that I enjoy my work on average. On the whole though I would say that I do enjoy my work but I would caution anyone looking to get into this business to take a deep look at their abilities and their coping mechanisms before they took the plunge.
My conversation with this guy (in his 30′s) covered a range of things but I mainly focused on just how technical he was if at all and what he thought he wanted out of pursuing a career in INFOSEC. It turned out that he was not that technical and had only just started taking a course at the local community college on Python. It was at that opening moment that I knew this kid would have a long road ahead of him and made that as abundantly clear as I could without being a complete and utter bastard. Basically, in your 30′s

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