Cloud Ops or Security Engineer

dblink07

Hello All,

I am in a unique situation. I have over 5 years experience in IT, mainly support, sysadmin, and a little networking.Upon Graduating with my bachelors in IT, I accepted a position at a great company as a Technical Support Engineer. Next week we will have our annual company meeting, and my manager (who's awesome!) wants to set me up with the directors of the department that I see myself in long term with the company. Next week he is going to introduce me to the respective department directors, so that they can groom me and have me tag a long with certain projects. The problem is that I'm interested in both cloud ops and cyber security, do you guys have any thoughts on how to narrow down the two. Do you feel like there is more growth potential, than the other one? 

Thanks

stryder144

Cloud security...that will likely gain traction over the near future due to how many companies have moved to AWS, Office 365, etc.  Not overly helpful but just the observation that I would put out there.

DZA_

Technically, either one would be a great career but it comes down to what you want. Orgs are constantly are being migrated to the cloud so there is no shortage of work there and people want expertise! Would you still like to be in operations or would like to be a security engineer with less client face time (unless this is a MSP/MSS) then you would be interfacing with the clients to some degree. From a security engineering standpoint, you hear it all the time, being a security engineer has a high earning potential as these are sought after skills as well as tons jobs available in the market. If I had the option to choose one, it would be the security engineer.

To Stryder's point, if there is a niche skill set to fill as a Cloud Security Engineer, why not? Our Enterprise (financial sector) do have positions like that. 

dblink07

stryder144 said:

Cloud security...that will likely gain traction over the near future due to how many companies have moved to AWS, Office 365, etc.  Not overly helpful but just the observation that I would put out there.

Thanks stryder144, Yeah could see that becoming more in demand in the near future. It seems security may be the direction I go in, and possibly grab an AWS cert for more exposure to cloud.

dblink07

DZA_ said:

Technically, either one would be a great career but it comes down to what you want. Orgs are constantly are being migrated to the cloud so there is no shortage of work there and people want expertise! Would you still like to be in operations or would like to be a security engineer with less client face time (unless this is a MSP/MSS) then you would be interfacing with the clients to some degree. From a security engineering standpoint, you hear it all the time, being a security engineer has a high earning potential as these are sought after skills as well as tons jobs available in the market. If I had the option to choose one, it would be the security engineer.

To Stryder's point, if there is a niche skill set to fill as a Cloud Security Engineer, why not? Our Enterprise (financial sector) do have positions like that. 

Thanks for the reply DZA_, I'm with you Security engineer will be more than likely the route I'm going to go in. Once I get my foot in the door, I could possibly still dip in the cloud department later. My ultimate goal is to get my CISSP, and to be able to sit for it I will need to have a security role for a number of years. I think this would be a great opportunity to take advantage of, meanwhile I will get my security+ and CEH.

Z0sickx

The Cloud is the next big wave so i'd encourage to go on that path. With that said i feel Cloud ops and Security Engineering will converge in the short term you'll have to do the grunt work at some point to have your tools/applications work in hybrid environments and or full cloud deployments. You don't want to be behind the curve with the money out there. Grind it out and focus on both aspects

LordQarlyn

Cloud is the way to go, unless you can get into AI and machine learning. That way you'll be employable when the Fourth Industrial Revolution goes in full swing.