Career Advice

Alexsmith

I've been lurking for a few months on this site and reading the threads from other members helped me gain a better picture of the different situations and career paths in IT. I was recently laid off from a desktop support position and have been just looking for jobs and doing temporary projects. If I have to look at another outlook issue I'm going to scream...and since just getting my CCNA last week I think it's time to find something else.

So I decided that I should focus my direction on something that I would like to do..a position in IT security, specifically working with security policies such as C&A and identifying potential system weaknesses. Right now I wouldn't mind going into a junior role working with incident response or network analyst just to start. I'm on my last year for my BS in Network Security so far which should be a big benefit.

My question is, how do you guys suggest I focus to getting a entry level position like that? How did some of you get started in security.

ande0255

Anyone I have known to get into security, is to start at a help desk position within a company, and selling themselves to the security group after establishing a good reputation in their current department. I'm not sure of just about any company that would hire an external candidate with no experience.

Unfortunately, unless you completely luck out with a smaller company that can stick you directly into a role, you have to start from the ground up.