Shortly I will begin a one year full-time cybersecurity program. This is the start of my specialization in the computing field, but also the security field.

My original career direction was not related to computing at all. My education and initial career path was in Industrial Systems Engineering (a combination of systems engineering and mechanical engineering). I worked as a manufacturing engineer after graduating with my bachelors, however over the course of that first stint in my career I found many effective software solutions to logistical problems, and thus I found myself diving deeper and deeper into computing.

I kept diving until I was working full-time as a software developer, filling in the necessary computing background using the excellent teachyourself.com guide, over half of which I've completed at this point.

When I switched careers from manufacturing to software, I formed a 5-year plan to self-study undergraduate computer science and software engineering and then, after gaining some exposure to the software industry, to choose a specialty.

Well after 4 years, that time has come.

I choose cybersecurity as my future career path for a number of reasons.

First, because ever since writing my first web application, I've been paranoid about keeping the software I write secure. I would spend much time learning about how to securely use HTTPS, avoiding SQL vulnerabilities, configuring servers and so forth. I quickly noticed most developers do not share this paranoia.

Second, after the bust years since 2022 in the software development job market, I realized that the field for software developers is oversaturated, that programming is a general skill set these days (therefore not particularly valuable in the job market) and that the idea to specialize in my 5-year plan was more prescient than I realized.

Third, I realized I needed to chase one of the unsolved problems in computing if I wanted to have a long term career. The drivers of job growth in the software industry for the last 15 years or so, web and mobile development, are both fields of software development that have largely been solved and standardized. Most business have built all the web and mobile applications they need at this point, and are now in maintenance mode, whereas the few greenfield projects go to teams of seniors (and not juniors like me), of which there is a surplus. Cybersecurity however, is still an unsolved problem, and in fact is a problem that continues to grow in scope as computers are integrated into more and more systems of all sorts.

To aid in my specialization in cybersecurity, I decided to go back to school as opposed to self-study despite self-studying my way into software development. The reasons for this are to educate myself in the field more quickly, to gain that critical context of the field that formal education provides and to make connections in the field. Once I complete the program I will pursue certifications and capture the flag challenges.

To further these goals, I also decided to pursue the security field more generally while I study. So I got a part-time job as a security guard in a mall that sees its fair-share of security incidents (from what I can tell from other the stories of other guards, the mall I work at has a moderate level of security incidents, so a good place to learn for a noob).

Between formal education (and self-study of course!), certification, capture the flag and hands-on experience in the physical security field I hope to break into the cybersecurity profession, which I further hope will be a long term career in an unsolved field of computing.