Security career focus

MitM

I've been thinking a little bit about what to focus on career wise. I'm not looking for employment at the present time but always want to be prepared and skilled. I'm in a unique position at my current employer. I'm managing cybersecurity but my boss really wants to utilize all my skills and keep me hands on. I have no problem with that, as I'm built more like a security engineer/architect than a manager. Btw when I say manager, I don't have a team.

I've been thinking about picking up some cloud skills, probably leaning towards Azure at the present time, but AWS is always an option. I'm considering going for the ISC2 CCSP next year. I also want to increase my knowledge of F5. I'm the only one at my company that knows anything about F5 LTM, but I'm not close to being an expert. I'd like get skills in their APM/ASM modules too. Other than that, I want to learn more about Cisco Stealthwatch and Umbrella.

This is on top of focusing on intrusion detection, vulnerability mgmt, etc

Am I going too much all over the place?

paul78

MitM wrote: »

Am I going too much all over the place?

IMO - and this topic comes up once in a while, I've always favored having a broad understanding versus specialization. I have the same belief with security careers. When you think about how an adversary may potentially compromise an organization, having a broad exposure to various security topics can only enhance any security professionals ability to be effective. I think your approach makes a lot of sense.

One comment about Azure vs AWS - if you work in a regulated industry like financial services, Azure may serve you better since cloud adoption in financial services tend to lean towards Azure. If you are in a more tech-based industry, AWS adoption seems to be higher. That said - AWS has the lion's share of the cloud service provider space so AWS knowledge could server you better in the short term.

MitM

Thanks for the response Paul. I agree with you.

Good point on Azure vs AWS. I was leaning towards Azure as my environment is heavily based on windows. Can't really go wrong with either.

Danielm7

I agree on the broad portion, security is already a specialty and there seems to be a very good market for people who have a broad engineer type background in the field. You might not end up as something so specific like cell phone forensics, but there are tons of jobs in medium+ sized companies looking for people with well rounded security knowledge.