Ways to expand beyond your job??

QPsyche

Hello everyone

I'm a newbie in this industry and am looking to pursue a career in cyber security with a particular focus in app/network/physical penetration testing.
I've been doing research whenever I have time to find out what this field is all about and I am pretty excited after all.

But I've always had a thing for community service and have kept up with it throughout most of my education years in various ways. I'm starting to realize that once I enter this specific field of IT, there won't be so much of "community service" involved and searching volunteer opportunities didn't yield much of anything.

So I'm wondering: Can your profession in cyber security be utilized beyond your job? I'm just hoping it's my nearsightedness that's preventing me from finding wonderful opportunities.
Any experience or knowledge of such would be very much welcome! Thank you!

Verities

This is one of those situations where pursuing a degree in IT security would be very helpful. People don't usually just jump into the security field (I'm sure there a few exceptions to that), but start in another field of IT then transition later on. Different aspects of security can be developed into your skillset as you gain more experience in the IT field. Also, study up on security blogs, Common Vulnerabilities and exposures, Nessus, Wireshark, networking, and security best practices.