Obsessively Fixated on Networks & Cybersecurity

Hello world, my name is Alan. I’m roughly two years into my journey of breaking into the IT field, with my sights set on cybersecurity as the end goal. Specifically, I’m focused on continuing to build my technical knowledge to become a formidable penetration tester. In these initial two years I’ve acquired the CompTIA A+ & CCNA certifications, both through hours of self-studying and virtual labs. The CompTIA A+ was the perfect foundation to build my technical skills upon. It provided me with knowledge in configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting machines whether it be from a software or hardware perspective. The A+ also introduced me to various other fields within IT: security, cloud, virtualization, networking, etc. With that, I decided to further add to my technical capabilities by continuing to dive into networks and how they operate. This led me to shift my focus towards the Cisco CCNA certification. The CCNA challenged me to quickly understand how the transfer of data is handled from application down to the physical layer. In preparing for this certification’s exam, I was forced to invest countless hours configuring virtual networks within lab environments. This allowed me to grasp the process of engineering systems, subnetting, securing them, and everything in between all through hands-on experience. Now armed with the proper knowledge to administer both machines and the networks that connect them, I am actively seeking an opportunity to apply this newly found skill set under a professional role.