I heard cyber security is a great field to be apart of. I've heard it takes a knowledge of both software and hardware.

But Im clueless at programming.

I took a visual basic class in college and I loved it. But not long after the class ended I had to dropout due to family/ personal reasons. Before I withdrew from the community, I was taking Java and it seemed so strange

I would recommend learning Python. A lot of vulnerability exploit kits are in Python. I would also learn Bash scripting just to automate Linux tasks.

As far as where to start in cyber security, it really depends on what you want to do. Would you like to be an offensive security certified professional (OSCP certificate) or a security-focused systems administrator?

Or would you like to go more academic and do things like security research or cryptography?

I'll second python and bash. But really, once you understand one you should be able to pick up others without too much trouble.



100% this!! Cyber security is a huge field with lots of different job functions within it. Some of them don't even "need" programming knowledge, but almost all would benefit from it. I'd say to take some time and investigate what the different roles are and what they do, find what sounds most interesting to you and dig deeper into it.

I started off with ubuntu, learned how to move files, change permissions, basic terminal commands, etc... after that I moved on to Arch just because the wiki is amazing has pretty much everything you need to know. I got done setting up arch about 2 months ago & customising to my liking. Now I am working on learning a bit of python / bash & automating some tasks I do on a regular basis.

^^ this is my approach at learning security. Figured linux was a must, went with a basic distro & moved into a more advanced one with nice documentation.

Edit: just now starting to do some research in security & how people exploit. Still a noob at it lol

i am clueless when it comes to specifics and do I need to d/l linux?

Alot of the programs/languages like ubuntu or bash(assumin its a language) I am not to familiar with.

Can yo explain the diffeent functions of a cyber security analyst ?

One step at a time. First start using linux as your daily driver for next few months. in the meantime learn ruby and bash, and python won't hurt either

Starting in linux if you choose that path will help you get a general understanding of things & there are plenty of tools available. The work flow is extremely fluid. Once you use ubuntu for a while & get to know terminal commands can be executed a lot faster than navigating through a graphical interface. If I were you I would look up some guides on YouTube & just ask your self how you would perform the tasks in Windows compared to linux. Just depends what you want to do though, most stuff can be done in Windows also.

thank you guys it means alot. Is Linux a free download?

How hard was it for you to adapt? Any tips?

Linux is an operations system, like Windows or Mac OS. There are many different versions of Linux, Ubuntu is one of them. Bash is the equivalent of using the windows command prompt, so when people talk about learning bash they mean two things: how to use the command line to do things, and how to create scripts full of commands to automate things.

Linux is free to download, install, and use, you'd just need to pick a distribution to start with.