FROM ONE WAR TO THE NEXT
Cybersecurity was far from the career I ever imagined pursuing. With that being said, I followed the usual career in Business as many students do. After attending my local Community College (San Bernardino Valley College), I realized that “Business” was a far cry from what I was meant to do.
Taking a hiatus from school, I enlisted in the Military shortly after 9/11 occurred, and while I initially went in as a Light-Wheel Mechanic, it wasn’t until I first came across an article regarding the increase of cyber-attacks against the US at the hands of countries like Russia and Korea. During my deployments I became more and more interested in articles pertaining to online hacktivism and ways that the government struggled in filling the gap in combating cyberwarfare.
I then decided to re-class into a field that dealt with Information and Technology and after completing 10 years in the military. I enrolled at DeVry University in Pomona, Ca and pursued a degree in Computer Forensics as a pathway into Cybersecurity. I believe that in order to understand the online threat, I needed to first start from the inside: with the basics of understanding how data is stored and recovered from all devices and work my way outward. Understanding that one line of code can affect an infrastructure and wreak havoc is but one of many things that a hacker can do, so I had specialize in ways that a hacker will think, and this field helped me start. I began to understand more about the dangers that come with connecting a device to the internet and how vulnerable and at risk children and the elderly are when they get exposed to its dangers. After all, they are the most popular target.
Anyone can claim that they are knowledgeable in ways to protect themselves, but the reality is that we have become more and more dependent on technology and thus, easily fall prey to its dangers.
It was in 2014, that I was invited to join a few classmates to compete in the Western Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (WRCDC), The Information Technology Competition (ITC) and the National Cyber League (NCL). It was through these events where I found how much I also enjoyed Data Forensics and the ways that Cybersecurity as a field has much to offer.
I began to seek more and more of these capture the flag events in an effort to hone-in my skills to better improve myself. One way to keep practicing is by setting up my own penetration workstation as well as testing various forensic tools while jumping in head-first into Kali Linux as my first Linux experience.
I began attending various online webinars, registered for cybersecurity training offered by various entities (both civilian and federal sector), joined various professional forums, met like-minded people both inside and outside of the field, took online courses via the CABoK course sponsored by the VA, courses hosted by local security companies and most recently, accepted Cisco’s Cybersecurity Scholarship (CyberOps certification) which I hope to complete in the next few days. I am currently waiting for my start date for an internship where I hope to learn from the top cybersecurity and forensic professionals in the field.
To summarize all the things I have done and participated in to get to where I am now would take a long time. But, I will say this: there are few things I get excited about in life, and this field has awakened a desire to continue learning, especially when the end reward is helping people understand and learn about the dangers found online. Being able to help others this way always makes those long and extensive hours of learning… worth it.
DeVry University: CIS – Computer Forensics
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalena-seitz-94083a7b
