My intro to the Cyber/IT Scene

This will be the first of many articles that I write on Medium, coming across the website while looking at write-ups while going through the beginner path of TryHackMe.

As of 10/02/2021 I am Network+ certified.

In 2019 I moved back up to NYC and wanted to get my career started and IT was the direction I wanted to go in. I was a fraud analyst at a major bank for about 2 years in Florida and came back home after my brother Russ passed away. Russ and I were the computer/tech guys of the family, whenever anyone had an issue they would call us. When I got back here I started a job in a restaurant helping set up all the computers, POS systems, printers, internet, and everything else that had to do with tech.

It was around that time that I discovered the Google IT Support certificate program via Coursera and went ahead and finished it in about 4–5 months. There was a section in the course called “IT Security: Defense against the digital dark arts” and right then and there, I knew what direction I wanted to go in. I was intrigued; pen testing, forensics, threat hunting, blue team, red team, gray hat, black hat, white hat (I could name off 1000 things that caught my eye).

How would I go about learning this though? I knew I wanted to finish my Bachelor’s degree and I knew that I didn’t want to go back to school for some random degree that would just be a waste of money. That is when I started doing some digging and found out about WGU’s Cybersecurity and Information Assurance program. At about the same time the Covid-19 Pandemic started (March 2020) and I was laid off from my job at the restaurant, so I started up my own little business helping people set up their computers, diagnose Wi-Fi issues and help with everything else that could go wrong while working from home. Although I got laid off, this kind of worked out for me, I was looking at getting my A+ certificate anyway and now I had plenty of time to study for it. Not to mention I had to straighten out some stuff before I could head back to school (A+ from CompTIA & the Google IT Support also give credits towards the BSCSIA degree at WGU).

Fast forward to February 2021 and I received my A+ cert from CompTIA and by March 2021, I transferred my previous credits from my previous college experience and from my certifications and started my first class on April 1st, 2021. As of this writing, I am CompTIA A+, Google IT Support, and ITIL v4 Foundations certified, learning Python, participating in the WGU Cybersecurity Club, a member of Omicron Sigma Sigma, going through TryHackMe, Rangeforce, HackTheBox, learning Github, built my first gaming PC, started a little website brcyberit.com, and so much more. I really love the journey and enjoy every minute of it.