Getting into security

[K3yb0ard]

Hello everyone. I have been doing a lot of reading and studying. I was wondering what the best way to get into the security field was. I am working on a bachelors in computer information systems with a specialization in information systems security. I have kind of played with backtrack but don't really know how things work or how to get them to work. I have also been learning linux. I'm running ubuntu as I type and i like it. Just looking for some friendly advice.

Thanks in advance

[lupin]

That depends - what particular area of security are you interested in? Pentesting, firewall administration, incident response, forensics, intrusion detection?

Whatever field it is, its likely that you will have to spend some time in a general IT field (Help Desk, Sys Admin, Programmer, etc) before you move into the field that really interests you, but its helpful to have your goal in mind first.

[K3yb0ard]

Right now I'm a pc tech for a hospital. Well the only one lol. I wat to do pen testing, intrusion prevention, making sure networks are secure and things like that. Some certs I want to get are the ceh, cissp, ccnp, security+, Linux +. Now I'm working on mcsa cert.

[lupin]

Right now I'm a pc tech for a hospital. Well the only one lol. I wat to do pen testing, intrusion prevention, making sure networks are secure and things like that. Some certs I want to get are the ceh, cissp, ccnp, security+, Linux +. Now I'm working on mcsa cert.

Do you want to have a focus on technical work or documentation style work? Personally I wouldn't bother with the CEH or the CISSP if technical work interests you and those certs aren't mentioned in job adverts in your location. The SANS GPEN, the OPST/OPSA and the Offsec OSCP are probably better choices if you actually want to learn something useful instead of just memorising a bunch of stuff. The best course for actually learning technical Pen Testing skills is the Offsec PWB course which leads to the OSCP cert. I dont know if that many people are actually aware of the cert yet, but the course is awesome, cheap and people who have heard of the cert usually regard it very highly. Its still not that easy to break into Pen testing however...

For the Incident Prevention/Detection side of things, try and do the SANS GCIA course (its great), and if you can't manage that then play around with Snort and SGUIL (both are free) and read Richard Bejtlich's Taosecurity blog and get his books. Id also suggest you focus more on the Detection side because there is more interesting work there- Intrusion Prevention has a heavy focus on dealing with False positives.

[K3yb0ard]

ok i will look into those. Thanks for the info. Sorry for the delayed reply, been busy with the holidays and everything..

thanks again.