why did/do you want to work in security?

And did it live up to expectations?

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Opportunity came in the military.

Ehh, its kinda boring. But I came from working with fighter aircraft and helicopters so my idea of fun varies greatly from most on this forum.

dhay13

worked in law enforcement for awhile and loved fighting crime and getting the bad guys. this is sort of an extension of that. when i was a systems admin i hated going to work every day (partially because of where i worked). now that i work in security i can't wait to go to work each day.

Danielm7

I like figuring things out, puzzles, finding things that are out of place, things like that. I get plenty of that in the field. I have to do deal with more large corporate BS than I expected, but that's mostly because there is some push back to change in the company. A lot of, "but, we've always done it this way!" as a counter for trying to put in security best practices.

Overall, I enjoy it a lot, it's work, it's a challenge, I don't get to hack traffic lights from the back of motorcycles though, that part was a little over-hyped.

Mike7

After spending time doing system admin, networking and application development, infosec seems like the logical next step.

I was with an application solutions company and customers were asking more security related than functionality related questions. And we have fun answering "security questions" from our customer. One security consultant wants us to block 8.8.8.8 but was unable to explain why. Another consultant told us to resolve "vulnerabilities" listed in VA scan ASAP but was unable to interpret much less understand the VA results. So I attained and put the CISSP (and other infosec) title in my email whenever I replied to them. The silence after that was deafening.

The news reports about the shortage of experienced security professionals are true. Infosec is fun if you are open to and like learning new things. It also provides job security

tmtex

Where I used to work, the sec guys just seemed to be on facebook all day

gespenstern

I'm paranoid.

I tend to think of myself as a rational being, but other people think I'm nuts when they learn about why I do this or that. I, on the other hand, consider majority of people insanely careless. Do they even analyze risks?

Mike7

tmtex wrote: »

Where I used to work, the sec guys just seemed to be on facebook all day

A GIAC instructor who runs a penetration testing firm told us about a pen test assignment where they were able to gain access into and move around freely inside the customer network without being detected. He later walked over to the customer SOC room to find the sec guys surfing net and reading books on pen testing. The SIEM guy glanced at his console; use his mouse to select all and deleted the alerts.

markulous

I like keeping up on current trends and integrating them into our environment. I also get to explore things and have freedoms I wouldn't have in other departments.

Kalabaster

I like the money.

It definitely lived up to the expectations

Russ5813

10+ years in law enforcement transitioning to a career in IT. I like investigative work, understanding the psychology of criminals, and training people to protect themselves. Security seems like a natural choice for me.

mbarrett

I had been doing sysadmin & netadmin for about 10 years, it seemed like an opportunity to dig deeper into interesting stuff without a lot of the day-to-day break/fix activity.

UnixGuy

A decision I took long time ago is to get a proper background and experience in networks/systems and then to move to InfoSec, so I did just that. Admittedly, I spent way too long doing sysadmin-y stuff, but it's all good.

TechGromit

Mike7 wrote: »

A GIAC instructor who runs a penetration testing firm told us about a pen test assignment where they were able to gain access into and move around freely inside the customer network without being detected. He later walked over to the customer SOC room to find the sec guys surfing net and reading books on pen testing. The SIEM guy glanced at his console; use his mouse to select all and deleted the alerts.

Don't know if this was the same story my instructor told us, but the network was suppose to be air gap network, the SOC guys just assumed any alerts they were receiving were bogus and just deleted them, cause after all it's impossible to penetrate an air gap network. What the SOC didn't know was some executive installed a cheap linksys switch so he could get to the air gap network from home for convenience. That's how the penetration testers infiltrated the "protected" network. Personally I think someone at the SOC should have been giving walking papers, but i don't know what the outcome was.

As for how I got into Cyber security, I was out of work and it was an opportunity I pretty much tripped over. Being in the right place at the right time.

Mike7

Nope. Different story.

Now everyone thinks that SOC people just surf internet and delete SIEM alerts.

E Double U

My config role was being offshored and the company's SOC was hiring. Didn't hurt that I knew most of the SOC guys.

It has lived up to my expectations. Many challenges, lots of learning, and never a dull moment.

beads

Started as your typical teenage blackhat stealing passwords, changing grades and doing things no one had neither answers to or even names for things like 'Denial of Service' or trojans. TRS-80s and DBII were cutting edge as well as access to any IBM 360 series mainframe.

I reformed somewhere in college but you couldn't make a living doing security until the very late 90s. Even then most thought we were kooks.

- b/eads

mbarrett

beads wrote: »

you couldn't make a living doing security until the very late 90s. Even then most thought we were kooks.

Early on, "security" just meant "firewall" and a few other things like don't write your password on a sticky note...sadly, the internet as it was designed in the early 1980's didn't include many security protocols or functions, most of them were overlaid onto the original after it was already in use.

chickenlicken09

what technical questions could i expect for a security analyst role?

markulous

eddo1 wrote: »

what technical questions could i expect for a security analyst role?

Depends on the responsibilities. For a typical analyst, I'd expect a decent amount of networking questions, port numbers, basic encryption/hashing, best practices for hardening, etc.

E Double U

eddo1 wrote: »

what technical questions could i expect for a security analyst role?

I've been asked to tell about my previous experience and I went into so much detail I wasn't asked much else after that.

TechGromit

My interview was behavioral based. Tell us a time you let down a client. Tell us how you would deal with a abusive fellow employee. Tell us a time you initiated a solution to a problem. etc. The didn't ask me one technical question or anything on my resume. I guess it helped I wrote down I invented the internet on my resume.

Remedymp

eddo1 wrote: »

what technical questions could i expect for a security analyst role?

Because you already have the Sec+ and CCNA and ITIL, the interview will more than likely a maturity test and incident handling. No one likes to waste time in an interview asking redundant questions where the answers can be easily googled.

LA2

Money/Job Security

abelamorales

I got into cyber security because I realized there was a huge skills shortage in the niche which yelled opportunity - the route I went, IR and SOC, is what I love to do. If you're someone that likes to analyze and correlate data, definitely something worth looking into.

dustervoice

The day my high school friend sitting next to me in class took my unattended 5.25 floppy and stole my BASIC code of how to add two numbers and submitted it as his assignment, i knew i wanted to get into security!

E Double U

dustervoice wrote: »

my unattended 5.25 floppy

That takes me back.

Mike7

dustervoice wrote: »

my unattended 5.25 floppy and stole my BASIC code

That takes me back to the time co-worker attempted to retrieve data from an old project floppy. He walked around entire office building looking for floppy drive. There is a problem..... he had a 8 inch floppy disk.