No degree, no certs, and eventually no job.

50 yr old JOAT with no certs or degrees. My current employer will probably be out of business within 2 years, so I need to take action now.

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mzx380

bhoops wrote: »

I have 30 years MIS/IT experience, basically 10 years database, 10 years C application development, and 10 years of "devops". My infosec work is limited to helping the Sysadmin staff investigate a few breaches, running auditing tools and parsing the output logs. I don't have a background in infosec, so some kind of certs would be a good idea, or at least I would want to make sure I knew the material covered by the certs. I have been teaching myself whatever I need to know for so long, a cert is basically a curriculum to me.

I think you are too hung up on lack of degree. A degree will help you advance up the ladder of an organization but if you are simply worried about EMPLOYEMENT, your expererience will definitely see you through to that. As already mentioned on this thread, you have the advantage of knowing the end is coming and not be blindsided by it. Your mission for these next two years is to find what path you want to specialize in and dive right in.

Help on this board is HUGE, use it to your advantage!

aspiringsoul

adrenaline19 wrote: »

Degrees in the states are really just another things for HR to check off the list. They'll even accept terrible schools like WGU or University of Phoenix as long as it says "degree" somewhere on it.

Actual knowledge is where you'll stand out. If you have that much experience, you should train for the specific path you want. With your programming background, you could get a high paying job pretty easily.

As someone with a degree from WGU and a degree from a For-Profit (ITT Tech) which was sued by the CFPB for Predatory lending and the SEC for misleading investors (they were accountable to Wall Street after all), I could not disagree more with your statement. Please...do not even put WGU in the same bucket as University of Phoenix.

While I wouldn't recommend WGU to a kid fresh out of high school, I do not hesitate to recommend the school to established IT pros who are looking for that "piece of paper" to get past HR.

So OP, if you're interested in getting a degree in IT, don't be scared away from WGU. But whatever you do, STAY AWAY from For-Profit schools.

bhoops

Thanks for the advice everyone, it sounds like I am overly concerned about not having a degree. I will start applying for jobs now. A friend sent me a link for a job that I was surprisingly well matched for (a mixture of programming and devops), so I know these jobs are out there.

If I have the ability to do Infosec at my current job (even if after-hours), would that be better than spending that time working on certs? For example, there are a number of tests (pen, fuzz, etc) I could do against our own products (both applications and web-apps).

I have been thinking about what would be "ideal", and I still think if I could travel around and work with smaller clients, it would be a fun way to be self-employed. For example, if a small restaurant chain had a PHP guy doing there onsite apps, I could pen-test/fuzz-test their code, and work with the PHP guy to make sure there was nothing obviously wrong, and then move on to the next client. A lot of small companies have a single IT guy/gal, who are not really infosec experts. Help their Windows admin set up a monitoring system to watch for network scans within their building, etc. In my career, I've worked for some big companies where I would often help the various interior departments, so I am imagining something like that - except each client would be a separate business instead of a different department.

adrenaline19

knowledge and experience are the two fastest routes to getting your desired job.

If you can prove you are capable of doing something, and you have the background experience to show, you don't need certs as much. You can always get them later on the company dime.

I recommend practicing pentesting in your own lab before going out and trying on production systems though. You could accidentally cause some serious damage. Just because you know some tools, doesn't mean you are ready to start pentesting businesses.

Also, doing code review requires a lot of NDA's or clearances. If you plan on doing it, make sure you have your bases covered.