Another MIS Degree Question

Hello all,

I been reading your website and seen the good advice give to people in my situation. Since every situation is a little different, I will post some questions that apply to me.

First and foremost I am a 45 year old student, I am 15 credits away from obtaining my MIS degree. Like everyone else before me, I am a little concerned about my future. Here is the rub, I have not help a regular position for the last 20 years. I have been a stay at home dad. During those 20 years I mostly worked for myself, but not things that I can put on a resume to really help me. For example, I repaired computer for 2 years "under the table", then after that. I was a day trader until the stock market crashed in 2008. In between I have been a realtor investor and I sill own three properties that I rent out. So with that said, although most of the last 20 years was raising my kinds, I am very technical. I have always managed my own servers, made some money with ad sense and SEO. I have my own lab and am proficient with VMware, vsphere, sharepoint. If a TV dies in my house I take it apart and I fix it, not afraid to get my hands dirty managing a network. Although for some reason I have never worked with cisco products. But I have worked with sonic wall, sophos, untangle and pfsense. I am familiar with automation software and know a little programming "enough to understand what t he code is doing" but not enough o make a living out of it. I am familiar with windows server and active directory. Six months ago I applied at a part time computer tech job in my university. They gave me a hands on test and I passed it with flying colors, but I did not get the job. My guess is that I did not do a good job explaining the 20 year gap.

I have some questions, number one is "I can still chose concentration of Network security or information path "data mining". I am leaning towards Data mining although I do enjoy network security. Please correct me if wrong but my concern is that "network security" is once of those thankless jobs. As long as you are not hacked people leave you alone, but the minute you are hacked "your in for a world of hurt". I am not sure which of the two will help me more or be more beneficial to me. I have no certifications and I have considered getting some. Other than the A+ and co. What other certifications are useful. I do not know what I want to do as I do not have a clear path yet, but I rather stay on the IT side of my degree. Suggestions and advice is welcomed.

Thanks

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Comments

ajs1976

Will your school help setup an internship?

Redemption

There are opportunities for internships. However, in order to graduate in December, I need to attend school during the summer. But perhaps it is to my advantage to sacrifice a little and do a summer internship?

Redemption

Any suggestions?

ITSpectre

Redemption wrote: »

Any suggestions?

I need google translate for this post....... and now my head hurts

beads

Since your experience appears to be light in the office side I was say the data mining path would be the fastest way into an office setting. Security though hot today is in a bit of an amalgam while we change over to cloud in the next few years. Data analytics on the other hand should get you up to speed right away and back into an office. If your MS concentration doesn't have or you haven't had enough data mining under your belt Coursera also has a concentration/certificate available for around 250 bucks.

I generally do "The Great Courses" and Coursera for CPEs/CEUs on other certs and whatnot. Once you have some background experience with analytics and still have some interest in security I would start to write a paper or two on the esoteric subject and I guarantee you if it gets noticed, you WILL indeed be getting picked up by a security analytics company like SentinelOne, Damballa LightCyber, etc. If the paper is good submit for ThotCon or better con and get some real visibility. This is where the industry is headed and fast. Problem is we're just getting started and the bad guys already have a head start on us and we need help digesting the constant alerts and warnings we get into actionable incidents.

If your that good. This is the path.

I wish you success.

- b/eads

- b/eads

Danielm7

Agree with beads, data analytics could be an easier path in. FWIW I work in security too and close enough to the network security group, it's not 100% thankless, but you aren't too far off. The coworkers who spin reports and data never really seem all that stressed. They aren't part of audits, they don't have things break and stop people from working, they don't get blamed for much, overall not a bad gig if you lean in that direction.