Not sure which direction to head in

Will most likely be sealing the deal on this CompTIA Security+, having second thoughts on pursuing the CCNA: Collaboration afterwards.

My original intentions were to spread my entry level knowledge of Cisco around three of the most sought after CCNA branches, in order to have a broad basic understanding of the field. I also wanted to do this to have an impressive resume in the case of seeking employment in the future.

Now that I've gotten my foot in the door at a NOC I'm dealing more with CCNA: R/S material and DataCenter. Thing is, I don't intend on staying at a NOC for my whole career. I've always wanted to get into information security, but more so on the network engineer side rather than management, maybe even network administration and dealing more with cloud/virtualization.

So now I'm not sure which step to take. I'm only about 2 months into the IT field so I feel like a CCNP R/S is way too early for how little exp I have so far.

I've been giving CCNA: Collab, CCNA: Datacenter, and CCNA: Cloud some heavy thought as my next cert to go after.

Thing with Datacenter and Cloud is that they complement each other. Would it be wiser to pursue both instead of just one?

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thewiz8807

Wanted to add that my long-term goal is to do contract work with DoD.

TechGuru80

Make sure you satisfy 8570 requirements...add CEH in your plan as some jobs might require it.

bpenn

I do contract work with the DoD, albeit in the IA/Service Desk realm. Consider your ability to get a clearance as part of the job. As long as you are honest and don't have any felonies you should be ok.

I think the DC track would be a great goal since you work with DC at your current role. Wait till you get a couple years of experience before you tackle CCNP, that way you can validate your experience and be extremely marketable at that point.

thewiz8807

More than confident in my ability to get a Security Clearance if the job requires it.

Just knocked out my Security+ certification, unsure of where to go next lol.

Edit -

Decided to go for the ITIL v3 Foundation certification, after that will be my MCSA Windows Server 2012.

Figured I'll stop my CCNA studies at the two most important ones in my eyes and specialize in R/S later on down the road when I have more exp under my belt. Maybe even shoot for a Dual CCNP/CCIE.