Buckling Down

the_Grinch

So I have been in my new position for almost two months now and have been loving it. Management is happy with my job performance (I even get joking emails from the owner of the company at night) and I believe I have made an impact thus far. I started reviewing my overall progress in life thus far and now see it is time to buckle down. I found it funny how easy it was to say I'm tired and there just wasn't time to study for certifications (been 2 years since I have taken a test). Looking at it introspectively, I found two reasons for this lag time and broke it down to percentages: 95% laziness and 5% a lack of direction.

I believe I found the direction and now just need to battle the laziness. Thus far I've been making subtle changes: eating better, changing normal bad habits that have been having an bad effect on my life in general (the laziness related things), and goal planning. I'd still like to move into a security position, but have learned thus far (through the help of this forum) that I lack the foundation in a technology to truly know how to secure it. Majority of what I deal with at work revolves around Microsoft and servers, thus I am going to start the Microsoft track of certifications. I wanted to finish my CCNA, but can't get into it enough to focus on completing it. I want to combine the Microsoft studies with Linux studies to futureproof myself a little bit. Figure knowing both would make me that much better.

So as always, thanks for the support and knowledge!

DevilWAH

if you want to go security route why not CCNA followed by the CCNA security cert, itsz just one more exam.

That will give you a nice founcation in network security. I am now finishing of my CCNP so I can do CCNP security to foloow it up, hopefully then I will have enough to gain a real security focused role.

I would suggest a good foundation to security would be to get your CCNA security and then study for Ethitical hacking cert. both togather cover a lot of the fundementals of network / OS / Social engineering areas of securiy, so would be a good foundation to decided where you want to go.

I think the great thing about security is, that it heps you understand lots of other areas that use it. Many exploits realy on knowing the systems at a very low level, so security often focuses around this. If you know how to protect a system propabable, the chances are you will need also understand what makes it tick.

And Linux iis great to get in to from a security point of view, it is much more inyour face with inux, (espicaly the server distributions), so as you learn Linux you will pick up lots of security ideas as you go.

good luck with it and let us know how you get on

the_Grinch

You are probably right, if I devote a month to it, I should be able to knock ICND2 out of the way. Shouldn't let my laziness derail something I am already half done. Thanks for the advice!