Hello, I am a cybersecurity analyst who has been in the industry for 15 years with the US Government, Missile & Defense Contractors, as well as a Cybersecurity Instructor. I figured I would make this topic to bring some attention to the field and perhaps get some of you interested in the industry. For any questions for me? Fire away!

Would you recommend switching from sysadmin to security?

Security seems to be the buzz these days with the younger crowd - but they all seem to thing their life is going to be like Mr. Robot or Swordfish.

I've heard its a lot of compliance and check boxing.

Also what certification path would you recommend? Obviously with CEH/CISSP being the end goal, I would assume?

Definitely make the switch from sysadmin to security. The salaries will only continue to grow as more and more hacks become newsworthy, whereas sysadmin will pretty much stay at it's current salary with minimal raises due to inflation.

Your life can go the Mr. Robot route if you wish to be a penetration tester - specifically Red Team, where your job is penetration testing with virtually no limits - just break into things as if you're a real world hacker.

The life can be all about compliance and check boxing, IF that is the route you go. There are specific compliance and governance roles focusing on PCI-DSS, SOX, NIST, GDPR, etc. It's a mundane role, but one of the most important, meaning more $$$.

As for certification paths, I ALWAYS recommend to start with a CompTIA Security+ and Network+. They are cheap, highly valued with companies, and is a good starting point to see if this is a field you truly want to go into. Following that, get the CompTIA CySA+, then the CASP+, and then go into the (ISC)2 CISSP. Avoid the CEH unless you get a company willing to pay for it. The cert is complete garbage and is only valuable to HR. If you truly want to go the pentester route, go with the OSCP which is a true hacking certification.

hello ! i do have a question!

ive been accused of something in path of exile game that i didnt do (credit card scam). now, everyone that knows me knows that im poor as fuck and dont even own a credit card, but mods dont take that for an answer. i assume the mechanism was that my internet provider shares dynamic ip addresses so i had some that some scammer used before me not sure, and it doesnt even matter anymore

so i ofc made a new account and, what do i have to do for them to not have a fucking idea its me? will vpn alone do? or do i need something else tldr: how to completely avoid a ban from a game and/or its forum?

I am unsure of what type of telemetry Path of Exile uses, but they COULD be tracking your hardware ID, which a new IP wouldn't bypass. I am unsure if they do or do not do this though, so don't quote me on it. If they do, short of you making drastic changes to your system and operating system, they could theoretically keep IDing you to your past account and banning you. If they don't do this, then a VPN would work, but I'd be worried about any massively used ones - you never know who else was on an IP before you. What you could do is instead of using a VPN, you could buy a private SOCKS proxy so that you can be sure only you are using it. To be able to use it with Path of Exile, just go through Internet Options on Windows, and you'll be able to input SOCKS proxy information. Alternatively, if the objective is to simply change your IP address and you have a static one from your ISP, I would look into spoofing/changing your MAC address on your router, which would force your ISP to give you a new IP. Swapping your router out to a different one will do the same thing.

As for making sure you've got no identifying ties to the forum, have your IP get changed, and ensure that you have wiped ALL cookies and cache from your browser.

ooh! thanks, i do appreciate the detailed reply ! but umm...i cant do that not that i dont want to, but you have no idea just how retarded i am with computers even the vpn setting was kinda hard for me..

although im pretty sure that even though its an open vpn, there will never be a scammer on those servers...and that is due to the fact that its absolutely HORRIBLE and no one in his right mind would play using it i mean i have 500 latency on average and game freezes when i try to do literally anything doesnt matter cause i only make hideouts, but still should deter anyone with a functioning brain to play poe on it so i think im safe

edit: i will try to do this though !

This post was edited by Snyft2 on Oct 6 2021 04:06pm

Well if anything happens to your current account, feel free to send me a PM, and I will help guide you through some things that you can do to ensure it doesn't happen again. :-)

thanksss, much appreciated ! i will just transfer items to a friends acc until some period passes so i have an least some degree of certainty

Vulnerability Scanning and Analysis Team Lead here
I have my CISSP, CCSP and CompTIA CSIS certifications. I’ve been in the field for going on 8 years. Nice to see some representation!

This post was edited by InfoSec on Oct 8 2021 08:52am

How was the CCSP? Been thinking about getting it added to the resume!