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Required Knowledge for a Career in Network Security

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the look-before-making-that-leap dept.

mtgarden asks: "I am trying to decide if I want to make a career shift into network security. I enjoy learning about cutting edge technologies and find security interesting. I am not especially good at programing but would potentially enjoy the analysis side of security. Where would I start studying to learn whether this field is a good fit for me?"

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. SANS.org by Tool+Man · · Score: 3, Informative

    SANS has a wealth of in-depth courses, taught by experts in the field. They aren't inexpensive, but these aren't courses you will find at your local community college either. Some are taught on-line, in their "SANS@home" programs, where you have books, a CD of test data (in my case), and the Java client gives you an interactive environment with slides and audio.

  2. Cutting Edge.. by onion2k · · Score: 4, Informative

    I enjoy learning about cutting edge technologies and find security interesting.

    You can forget dealing with the cutting edge. Security work is all about currently deployed applications. For example, doing an audit at the moment is much more likely to require a good knowledge of Windows 2000 than XP or Vista.

    --
    http://twitter.com/onion2k
  3. it's a very hard field... by Malor · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a system and network admin, security is something I think about quite a bit. As far as I can determine, truly good security people are the best of the best in the computer world. There is _nothing_ in computers as difficult.

    As an admin/architect, you need a prodigious memory; you have to know all the software you're deploying, with all its various warts. You have to know your operating systems, and their interactions with your chosen hardware, both system and network. And you have to understand your network layout and be able to troubleshoot.

    As a programmer, you need less knowledge and more raw brainpower. You still need to know how other people do things, but a great deal of the job is raw invention on the spot. Knowledge in the programming field tends to be narrow, specialized, and very deep.

    As a security person, at least to be a GOOD one, you need all the skills of both fields, plus more besides. You have to be able to audit source code and find weaknesses; you have to be able to probe a network remotely and understand its layout and where its holes are likely to be. Defensively, you have to understand all the possible ramifications and interactions with combinations of software. Offensively, you have to be able to find the holes that nobody else has seen before.

    Both programming and sysadminning can lead into security, but if you want to be GOOD, I'd strongly suggest trying to be both. You might want to program first; that's usually harder to break into, and it can be easier to get a job out of college. Admins tend to like experience as much or more than education, so once you have a good degree of programming skill, you can probably branch out and pick up what you need in terms of system administration. You don't necessarily need the day-to-day details, but you do need a very, very deep understanding of _exactly_ what the operating system and programs are _actually_ doing... not just the cruder models most of us tend to use.

    It is a very interesting field, but it'll take everything you have and then some just to keep up.