Advice for the future & what does security involve?

Simrid

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

I am about to finish my CCNA R&S certification over the next month and I am future thinking on what to achieve next. I have had a look around at job specifications and a lot of places want a CCNP R&S. I have next to no experience in networking so I am thinking it would be best to go broad, learn security, collab and design on a NA level then advance to NP.

I would like to ultimately be a voice engineer, however I am aware this is something I need to work towards. I am looking also at security certifications such as CISSP, what type of career could I achieve from this? What would the job entail?

In addition to this, should I do Security+ before CCNA security?

Thanks,
Simrid

NovaHax

Simrid wrote: »

I would like to ultimately be a voice engineer, however I am aware this is something I need to work towards. I am looking also at security certifications such as CISSP, what type of career could I achieve from this? What would the job entail?

CISSP is an extremely broad certification. It covers pretty much everything security. Despite it being well recieved in the industry, it is a generalist certification. So with CISSP alone, you could probably get a security manager position, but don't expect to be any sort of technical specialist with that alone.

Simrid wrote: »

In addition to this, should I do Security+ before CCNA security?

This is like comparing apples to oranges. Security+ is a vendor neutral certification that covers security fundamentals and CCNA:S is a vendor certification that demonstrates that you know how to engineer secure Cisco solutions. So it really depends on where you are trying to work and what job you are trying to do. If you want to do Cisco work...go the Cisco route, otherwise, go with Sec+.

SephStorm

If you like the idea of networking and security, you could look into careers such as security engineer, or a network security device specialist. Basically for those you would be installing, troubleshooting and configuring security devices, or alternatively maintaining device status'.

For the later, you will generally only need something like the CCNA R&S, though a CCNA:S would be useful as well as another vendor cert to show some flexibility.

If you are interested in the design, configuration and management of the devices, I would look at certs such as the SFCP (if it is still offered), CCNA/P:S, Checkpoint CCSA/E, Sonicwall CSSA.