A Word of Encouragement
✅ NOBODY is born with knowledge of any of this material. The amount of skill is a reflection of hours + effort. Everyone starts at zero.
✅ If you encounter someone very skilled, they’ve been practicing a long time. They didn’t acquire their skills overnight, I can promise you.
✅ Everyone learns differently, and at different speeds. Find the resources that will help you succeed, whether that’s on this page or somewhere else.
📢 You DO NOT need to be an expert in every single knowledge domain listed below! The idea is to build confidence across a broad spectrum of knowledge.
❗ There are no shortcuts! If you try to take shortcuts, you will eventually find yourself later trying to fill knowledge gaps. Take the time now to build a solid foundation.
💡 Learning new things is a slow process, but is well worth the time. It’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed at first. Take it in small chunks and things will start making more sense as you progress.
💡 I would encourage you to seek out a mentor or a community of your peers. It is an immense help to have others to learn from and learn with. It’s not a zero-sum game, we all give and take to and from each other.
Four Core Knowledge Domains
To be a well-rounded IT and cybersecurity professional, it is a matter of my opinion that the fundamental knowledge is broken into four domains:
- Operating Systems
- Computer Networking
- Web
- Programming
I put them in this order, because they build on each other. You should have a grasp of operating systems before moving onto networking. Then, have a grasp of networking before moving onto web. And so forth.
❓Where’s Cybersecurity on the list?
I believe that cybersecurity is a natural progression after competency in these four domains. The better you know the technology stacks, the better equipped you’ll be to defend them.
