Things have changed so much since I first decided to make a career change into cybersecurity. I thought I knew what role of security I wanted to be a part of. I had my plan laid out before resigning from Tesla, and I was going to hit the ground running.
I thought I had it all figured out.
My original plan was to attend a cybersecurity specific bootcamp. My goal was to get skilled and put myself out on the job market as soon as possible. At the time, time was a big consideration for me. I wanted to make a career change in as little time as possible because the longer I took, the longer I'd be without a job, and thus finances would become tight.
I prepared for being unemployed during this career change. As a previous Tesla employee, I had acquired a decent amount of shares. Prior to my resignation, I sold my shares and that money was going to help support my family while I attended a cybersecurity bootcamp. I estimated the time of completion to be approximately 6 months.
I did a lot of researching before deciding on Evolve Security Academy. Hypothetically, if I were to go this route, I had a short list of academies I would have considered attending (but I'll leave that for another blog entry). Evolve just made the most sense for me and my personal situation. I had a video interview with an admissions officer, and it went great. I felt comfortable with them. To top it all off, they offered me a $1,000 scholarship!
Thankfully, I had nearly a month before the academy started. I decided to use that time to self-study. I devoured anything and everything security that I could find. I attended virtual conventions. I read articles. I watched streams and webinars. I listened to podcasts. I participated in CTFs. I followed security professionals on Twitter that I aspired to be. I joined Discord and Slack servers.
It was during this time that my plan began to change, but more importantly, it started to take shape. There were 2 main reasons why it changed:
I found a lot of resources (free and paid) that I could use from home.
I couldn't find anyone local that had a security career with an Evolve Security Academy education.
Some of the resources I found were: Cybrary, InfoSec Skills, Immersive Labs, TryHackMe, HackTheBox, and OverTheWire. . .just to name a few. The list kept on growing everyday.
Additionally, I changed my LinkedIn account to Premium, and I was able to do some OSINT on cybersecurity professionals in my area. It allowed me to look for individuals that went to Evolve and who were actually working in the security field. I couldn't find anyone! And that worried me. Now don't get me wrong. I still believe to this day that Evolve would have been an exceptional choice for me if I decided to go that route.
I also did a lot of searching of available jobs in my area. Entry-level security jobs that I could see myself hopefully obtaining one day. They all had the same thing in common: each required that the applicant have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Engineering, or Information Technology. This was a route I was hoping not to go down because of the one thing I was most concerned with: time.
Enter Western Governors University. The university didn't reveal itself to me right away. I had to do some more OSINT on LinkedIn, and some chatting on Reddit, Discord, Slack, and Twitch. It quickly rose to the top of my list because it met all the following requirements: time, cost, and degree. Their competency unit model allows me to accelerate as fast as I can possibly go; the sooner I finish, the better return on investment. And the curriculum includes 10 industry recognized cybersecurity certifications at no extra cost.
I understand that there are some people that feel a certain way about a WGU education. And that's fine. What matters to me is that it is a recognized and legitimate Bachelor's degree, and that my research showed me that WGU alumni are in all facets of security worldwide, especially here in my local area.
I've heard and read the arguments for not needing a degree to start a career in security. At this point in my life, obtaining a Bachelor's Degree was always a lifelong goal of mine. What better time to do it than now.
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