Enhance cybersecurity awareness and survivability for DoD, industry partners, and academia in the face of the ever-increasing threat of cyber attacks. Cybersecurity (CS) includes managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information and the systems and processes used for those purposes, including analog and physical form. CS includes information availability, identification and authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation as well as the economic considerations with respect to selection of CS techniques, CS processes, and industry trends.
Looking for direction
This topic contains 5 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by 
vachons 2 years, 11 months ago.
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I am new to all this and would like some suggestions to get started in the cyber security field, where to start, what to learn, what kinda classes to take. I am retiring soon from the navy and want this to be my new career, any help would be great. I have started a basic online programming course over at the MIT site. I was told that learning programming would be a good start because you have to know how programs are written to be able to stop them.
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In general taking the programming courses at MIT will be useful. However, there are a large number of different cyber security tracks that one can get involved in and in most cases a solid networking background would be more useful than a programming background. I don’t have much to recommend in regards to training but I will take a look around or maybe someone else can chime in.
Good luck!
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You definitely want to understand networks (wired and wireless), next generation firewalling, and be proficient in Windows and Linux. When I was starting out, I invested in some used equipment and set up a home lab (VMware is your friend) to play around with the concepts I was learning. Check out GIAC for some roadmaps for the different security tracks and some good entry-level training. Don’t feel like you need to master everything at once. It is an impossible task and none of us are proficient in all areas.
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Have you looked all the resources CSIAC offers here: https://www.csiac.org/services/csiac-training/
Also, you could look into getting certified. The general cybersecurity certifications are (in order of least to most advanced): Network+, Security+, and CISSP. You can see more about them here: https://www.csiac.org/certification/ -
I’m also relatively new to the cybersecurity field, however, I agree with ariesbeck that obtaining a solid networking and data communications background will be a good area to pursue. While you are still in the Navy you might be interested in looking into the Defense Security Service website. They offer a broad selection of courses in the various security areas. Additionally, they offer free graduate level security courses that can be transferred to a masters degree program. However, the courses are only available to military, DoD civilians, and DoD contractors.
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You might want to check out CSIAC’s page on week 4 of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). The theme for the 4th week was “The Internet Wants YOU: Consider a Career in Cybersecurity”. CSIAC highlights resources to help students and job seekers to explore cybersecurity careers.
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