You might be going through the IT Networking Fundamentals course right now, feeling overwhelmed and thinking, “why do I even need to know this if I am going to be a cyber security analyst”?
This is because IT networking is the fundamental basis of society, everything from your brand-new smart fridge to your humble mobile phone requires network traffic (tiny little bits of data) to be routed to and from destination around the world. This is quite amazing when you think about it, the internet, everything we know, is just a system connected by many, many, many different routers, switches and cabling. This means when you dive down through it all, security is built on top of networking.
I come from a networking first background, this led me to a deep understanding of how packets are routed around the network and how systems use this networking. I personally believe that this had to led to a foundation of knowledge that has let me to be successful in cyber security. It is hard to know how to protect a system if you don’t know what the avenues of approach are.
Stick with IT Networking, please do not just gloss through the videos or leave them running in the background while you take your dog to the park. Pay attention, ask questions and I promise you, you put in the time, you will come out the other side with more knowledge that will benefit you in your cyber security career.