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I’ve been exchanging messages with another user on a digital marketing/SEO forum and he has been getting into web security recently. He gave me some pointers so I’ve been researching it. The more I research it, the more I realise that I need to walk before I can run.
To keep my skills fresh, I have decided to document my journey studying the CompTiaA+ and Network+ material, and then look at doing the exams in 2026. There’s a lot of great practical knowledge in there which builds on the theoretical knowledge I have from my Computer Science degree.
Initially in September 2025 my journey started with PortSwigger’s academy using their cyber security tool BurpSuite. and I began doing their labs on their excellent online courses.
I find it very interesting but I realise that competition there is very high. What many people would call “Hacking” is probably one of the more glamorous areas of computing, and it can attract some gifted users. Check out the many books written on hackers for instance, including Julian Assange of Wikileaks, or movies hackers, sneakers.
I also READ a very good point on Reddit about hacking/penetration testing/bug bounties essentially being another form of software testing in many ways.
A lot of cyber security can be done remotely but that means that competition for remote jobs is extremely high. For this reason I’m also looking at what type of demand there is locally here in the Sligo area.
General computer tech support and network support in particular seems in higher demand and is an excellent starting point so that you could move into cyber security in the future.
In many industries employees can run into the catch 22 situation of how do you get experience if you don’t have experience? I believe that one of the great things about computing/IT in general compared to other industries is that you can get experience yourself at home in your spare time.
I have 3 laptops,
- a MacBook Air from mid 2013 256gb SSD and 4 gig of RAM,
- MacBook pro retina 2015 with 16 gigs of RAM
- My main new machine,a wonderful M1 PRO with 32 gigs of RAM
My plan is to set up networks on mac Os, linux and Windows on the 3 machines, study the A+ and NEtowkr+ material, then run common networking issue labs, trouble shooting. Then document my journey on here.
I’ve been doing the Professor Messer YouTube courses and so I finished the 1201 course on November 13th 2025. This is approx 7.5 hours of video and which was launched and around March 2025. I watched at 1.25 speed to get the gist of what the course contains.
Now I’m just working through the 1202 course which is 13 hours of video an. I will then do the NEtowrk+ course which is around 13.5 of video. I’ll get these courses completed before Christmas and then start setting up the 3 laptop network while doing the videos a second time. Watch a video and then actually do the steps, techniques myself on the network.