I have recently started my journey towards a career change into the tech world, hopefully cybersecurity.
I’ll have an About Me page eventually, but here I am for now: I’ve been a professional musician in the U. S. Military for 21 years and will obviously retire soon. There’s not a lot of work out there for people like me, not at the salary I’m bringing in now. So I’m looking at fields I can transition into and still feed my kids. Luckily, I like playing with computers more than playing on my phone, and I like my phone a lot. Being in the military, I’ve also learned a lot about privacy and personal security. We’re in as much danger from our adversaries through our computers than from guns and bombs, probably more so. I’m hoping to gain knowledge and skill to not only protect the next venture I work for, but help the employees protect themselves.
That’s why I titled this site Cyber Mindfulness. A big word that comes up in mindful meditation is “awareness,” and I feel that the public needs a better awareness to protect themselves from cyber attacks. In what little I’ve studied, the practice used throughout all cyber offensive techniques is social engineering… or as I like to call it, scam, con, espionage. Just like a robber “cases” a bank before robbing it, we are “cased” more than even I realize. We need to develop street smarts in the cyber world just as much as we need to look out for pickpockets when we’re out and about.
In time, all of that will come. But for now, I will be mostly be sharing my journey in education towards this ideal. I have a lot to learn, and I have started by working towards a Google IT Support certificate, then working towards the trifecta of A+, Network+, and Security+ certificates from CompTIA. I’ll be sharing my experience for those that can make use of it. I’m also doing a lot of reading and podcast listening in my spare time, so I’ll be sharing my experiences there.
Thanks again to NetworkChuck for getting me started. My hope is that my site will become as useful as he claims it will.