We don't have to learn system administration to work in Cyber

We ?????? to learn system administration

We ?????? to learn networking

We ?????? to learn scripting and programming

When my sister and I were kids, we’d go through the Sears Christmas catalog every year and circle everything we wanted. My parents were teachers and musicians, so we were poor. But we had so much fun imagining what it would be like to have what we saw in that catalog.

In 1998-99, during my stint at Citicorp, my colleagues from the Unix security team all had Visio diagrams of their actual home labs and expanded versions of their dream labs. One of them had move than 30 machines at his house, all documented in Viso. He ran a weird collection of operating systems like FreeBSD, Solaris, NetBSD, Digital Unix, and, I think, some Cisco gear.

Later, I built a lab of about 20 machines that ran Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OpenVMS, Windows Server 2000, various blue Cisco boxes, and a Netgear 10-baseT hub that connected some machines over BNC connectors. It was hot, it was loud, it drew an immense amount of electricity, and it was thrilling to see!         

Oh, did I mention that it connected to the Internet over a single 56K modem until I got DSL in 2000?        

Reviewing those Visio diagrams felt just like paging through the Sears Christmas catalog.

If you don't love technology and working with computing with your own two hands, why would you want to be in cyber?

• It's not worth all the hard work and frustration.
• The money isn't good enough. If you want to make a lot of money, go into sales or become a bond trader.
• But cyber? Some of us do pretty well. But do so because we're obsessed with technology and its uses and abuses.

We are technologists first. It's in our bones. It's in our hearts. What makes us cybersecurity people is what we love, not just what gets us a paycheck.