Certification Plans & Paths

tkerber

First, I'm a young (recently turned 21 >:D) IT professional who has been fortunate enough to work in IT full-time since I graduated high school three years ago. I started three months after I graduated high school as a Desktop Support Analyst for a large fortune 500 company. I later moved to be a Support Technician for nearly 1,000 retail stores--supporting all of their infrastructure from servers to networking infrastructure, to even printers. I then got offered a job with a nice pay increase as a User Support Specialist at a company close to where I lived. I took that and realized it was tremendously boring and I was not challenged at all. I am now an IT Field Engineer 1 that does anything from imaging computers to troubleshooting and configuring firewalls, switches, routers, servers, etc.. I am starting to become more of a network engineer as time goes on and management trains me to do so. So that's a quick overview of my background other than I teach A+ classes for a small training facility part time and manage their network.

I have CompTIA A+, Net+, and some useless Microsoft cert I got in tech school with my AAS. I am hoping to take the Security+ soon because networking and security REALLY interests me. I know a lot of people probably come on here and say the same thing and expect to be a six figure security analyst after a couple of certs. I am realistic but I am hoping for those of you out there in security, if you could answer me this: What are you opinions on the Security+? What are some good paths to take for a career in security?? Lastly, do you have any other advice for someone like myself in regards to where I want to be?

Any advice for feedback would be greatly appreciated!

abyssinica

I think only you could possibly know what you want to do/be. Do some reseach for some days, read all about what's available for learning etc. And you'll be able to decide on your own.