So Now What? A Career Path Discussion

Why You Want to Create a Career Path

Everyone should have at least a rough outline for their career path. The last thing you want is to decide that you want to get into a field or specialty only to find that you haven’t prepared. For example, you don’t want to interview for a leadership position without having at least thought about why you want to transition into management.

From time to time, each of us needs take some time out to assess what it is that we enjoy and are willing to exchange our time for money. After all, our interests, desires and needs change over time. Once you decide what it is what you want to do, you need to decide how to get there. There are lots of ways to reach a destination, it’s just that some are more efficient than others. You can take the Jeffy route (I have) or take a more direct route – the choice is yours.

Certifications for Technical Leaders

Technical leaders are different from other leaders because we are responsible for using technology to deliver business results. That means we need to be adept at both technology and business (in addition to leading people – easy huh?). Since we need to be at least functional in those areas, it makes sense to me that we need to be trained and stay up to date in each area.

I like to alternate between technical and business or leadership training / certifications. I recognize that I still need to be at least somewhat creditable with my engineers, so I feel that it is important to get technical certifications or attend technical training. Consequently, since I just finished a Masters degree primarily business focused, I’m looking at technical training and certifications from SANS; specifically their Cyber Guardian program.

Please do not get me wrong, this isn’t some random technical certification that earns me a certain level of creditability with my engineers. Rather, this is a technical certification that helps me further down my current career path of becoming an information (cyber) security people leader.

SANS Cyber-Guardian Program

The SANS cyber-guardian program is a technically focused program that attempts to build a cyber special forces cadre, ready to protect and defend our information networks and assets. The SANS cyber-guardian program consists of baseline training in:

• Intrusion Detection
• Forensics
• Network Penetration

A candidate must pass each of the corresponding certification tests, and then they must pass the tests for their area of specialty:

• Blue team: perimeter protections, securing Windows, securing Linux
• Red team: Web application penetration testing, wireless ethical hacking, and developing exploits for ethical hackers.

Finally, to obtain the Security Expert certification, the candidate must pass the GSE exam.

What Do You Think

I’d love to hear what you think. Do you have a career plan? How often do you think about it? How do you make sure you keep up with technology and business or leadership skills? If you’re in the security field, what do you think about the SANS Cyber-Guardian program?

Tagged as: career path, career path planning, Certifications, cyber security, GSE, information security, infosec, SANS