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I\u2019m often asked by folks entering the cybersecurity career field, \u201cHow do I land (or keep) a job in cybersecurity?\u201d and \u201cShould I get a degree in cybersecurity or focus on certifications?\u201d The bottom line is that there is no one answer that fits everyone. As with most things in life, it depends. Where you are at in your career, life\u2019s journey (i.e., age), financial resources and your own ambitions are all things to consider. In this post, I\u2019ll cover options in hopes of helping you understand the benefits of each and how you can grow your career as a cybersecurity professional. This is part 2 of my series on <\/span>Breaking into Cybersecurity<\/a><\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n From a career or professional perspective, information security (aka cybersecurity or information assurance) is now a stable and growing profession. Information security jobs are expected to increase by 28 percent through 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). With all the opportunity, landing a cybersecurity job can still be tricky trying to meet the laundry list of requirements that are often looking for the optimal candidate who walks on water. <\/span><\/p>\n Below are some steps for you to determine certs or degree and help you build your cyber career:<\/span><\/p>\n Pick the one where you have the most strengths. If you love playing with technology, go tactical. If you\u2019re more prone to management and process, consider strategic. A word of caution: don\u2019t try to do both and be a jack of all cybersecurity trades. Folks in this position (like me) are often seen as a master of none and are disqualified from many jobs. I\u2019ve been told dozens of times that I\u2019m too technical for strategic jobs and not technical enough for tactical. By the way, picking one over the other does not mean you won\u2019t need to know how the other side works. Strategic needs to understand technology and tactical needs to get business risk. The Cyber Seek website (<\/span>https:\/\/www.cyberseek.org\/pathway.html<\/a><\/span>) contains a list of careers for each path. <\/span><\/p>\n No matter the path, you need to:<\/p>\n If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice<\/em>. Don\u2019t let the choice be made for you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Landing and keeping a job in cybersecurity What\u2019s best for your Cybersecurity career: certification or a degree? Strategic (GRC) vs. Tactical (Technical) career paths I\u2019m often asked by folks entering the cybersecurity career field, \u201cHow do I land (or keep) a job in cybersecurity?\u201d and \u201cShould I get a degree in cybersecurity or focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,32,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careers","category-concepts","category-human-aspects","category-security-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurity.bellevue.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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This is just a short tutorial on building your cybersecurity career. Like in the Matrix, you need to pick a path (the red pill or the blue pill \/ strategic or tactical \/ education or certification) and move towards your goals.<\/p>\n