My Self-Taught Journey - Cybersecurity Courses

It has been a while since I am sharing my learning journey. Since now I can have more time focusing on this again, I’ll start sharing what I learned recently. I am a self-taught and my goal is to build my own app & getting certified. I know these days you can literally build any app with AI but I find my own satisfaction by understanding things at my own pace and on my own. It’s not going to be fast but I’ll have some type of understanding on it. Anyway, while lately I am really not learning to code, I am learning something called “Cybersecurity For All “ by Cisco. They have some self-paced study and courses on it and are great resources.

Cisco For ALL

I finished the first course a while ago and moved on to Network Defense, the intermediate part of the course. The course includes how-to access control, firewalls, cloud security, and cryptography. It’s a domain that I needed to learn more since I have to say I am pretty confident when it comes to the basics.

https://www.netacad.com/

Since I finished the first course a few weeks ago, I haven’t touched it again since. If you’ve followed my personal development journal I’ve been missing a couple of studying sessions. So, it’s why trying to motivate myself again, I am going to do just like my Personal Development series where I update once a week about it. So far, it has been a great experience and motivates me to actually do it.

There are some courses that are free that I am going to do before getting a certification that are paid. I mean, that’s where I also want to get after learning all this other than having my own websites. At the same time, talking about them also helps me with retention. It’s the studying technique that I had from way back then at college. Talking about it helps and this is the space where I am going to share what I’ve learned in a week in my own words and easy to digest.

OpSec and some notes

In another note, I want to talk about Operational Security (OpSec)because when you’re in the cybersecurity field, this is also the basics.

I know that maybe at this point, my OpSec is pretty bad haha but trust me, a good OpSec is being anon and being a little paranoid as much as possible. I mean a good OpSec also takes quite a lot of work with a mix of paranoia. It’s not what most people do to be honest but there’s a reason why even as individuals we must have a good OpSec. First being, making you safe from possible attackers be it spammers, hackers, and even those who are into your wealth and want to slander you or use your data for malicious activities.

The point is, even if you’re not a hacker, having a good OPSEC is a must as these days data is a a lucrative commodity that has value and can be sold. When you don’t have a good OPSEC and leave a lot of crumbs, that’ll leave more info for your pursuer. Some extreme examples are like Ross Ulbritcht and more listed in this article. Even CrowdStrike alleged hackers were also identified because of bad OPSEC and left crumbs all over the internet.

https://medium.com/@jasonjayjacobs/how-tor-users-got-caught-from-bad-opsec-6ceac4faafb3

Even when you’re not a hacker, there are cases where people steal identities to be used as fake persona online and even to apply for a loan. In some countries, credit card theft is pretty common and I’ve witnessed a few cases of it myself. That’s why, before you’re losing your money/wealth, it’s better to be prepared than sorry.

Can you be private in the open world?

Yes. There are many ways to do it. For example, when on social media, do not post directly of your current location, where you want to go. Even when you’re in the area and so badly want to post about it, wait until you’re going home and when you’re not in location anymore.

Whenever you’re posting something always ask your questions “ Are you revealing too much information that can be used against you ?

That’s all for now and I’ll draft out something later to share.

Anyway, the end goal of learning all this is to live up to my dreams. The dreams that I put on hold for so long. I strayed too much from this dream and I am going to do whatever it takes to be able to do it once again. So, stay tuned if you want to learn something new!