A FREE course for those interested in a career in Cyber Security and have no idea where to start with it.

The course is a pre-requisite to the Cyber Defense Analyst Bootcamp.

You'll learn about the most prevalent cyber risks and threats and the basics of Windows, Linux, and networking.

If you like this course, you'll likely really enjoy Cyber Security!

Get started here: https://leveleffect.com/home/cyber-security-foundations/

They're all the same position just with different naming conventions due to no standardized name in the private sector. The public sector as per the NIST federally mandated security framework calls these roles a “Cyber Defense Analyst” which is what we adhere to and have built our curriculum in accordance with

The Cyber Defense Analyst is a title suggested by the NIST NICE framework that is the same as these positions

The abilities, knowledge, skills, and tasks for this role can be found: 

https://niccs.cisa.gov/workforce-development/cyber-security-workforce-framework/workroles?name=Cyber+Defense+Analyst&id=All 

A Security Operations Center (SOC) is where the cyber security team works from in most organizations 

Cyber Defense Analyst / Cyber Security Analyst 

This is the majority of the jobs on the market and will likely be your starting position. You're the first point of contact to triage and respond to security incidents based on your "Tier" level and actively monitor the network for threats. There are generally three tiers and each has greater responsibility and expectations to resolve incidents. 

Compliance Analyst 

This could be another starting position but some technical experience will vastly expedite your success. You're responsible for ensuring everyone is following the rules but more importantly following the RIGHT rules and live in the land of processes, policies, documentation, and meetings. You'll work with just about everyone and have a birds-eye view of the security program preparing gap analyses and roadmaps to ensure the company security program is effective. You'll learn or become well-versed in PCI (credit card), HIPAA (health information), SOX (financial) and more legal/federal requirements. 

Cyber Security Engineer 

Part analyst, developer, and sysadmin, and generally considered a role after some experience as an analyst. When you're not supporting analyst activities you'll primarily be building out and implementing secure infrastructure/architecture and solutions with the IT or DevOps or Development team or with other Engineers. You'll work a lot of cloud technology and ensuring availability of resources are met in secure methods that prevent unauthorized access to accounts/data/services. 

Threat Intelligence Analyst/Engineer 

Part technical writer, part analyst and generally considered a role after some experience. You'll research, prepare, and present detailed reports on relative adversaries including their techniques, tactics, procedures and how your network can best stay focused and respond to these threats. 

Incident Response Analyst/Engineer 

Part analyst/part threat intel. A more specific analyst that is focused on responding to immediate threats and prepares playbooks to respond to them for others to follow. Creates log and traffic alerting logic using industry tools. This is typically not entry level and only available in larger organizations with funds to support it. 

Penetration Tester 

Not likely an entry level role but if you're skilled enough by self-teaching it can be. Accounts for a very small percentage of the jobs and is considered to be the "hacker". Your main function is to audit security controls under tight/strict scope put in place by defenders and see if you can circumvent them largely by looking for misconfigured permissions and known vulnerabilities and then preparing and presenting lengthy technical reports that detail your findings and recommended remediation steps to prevent them from happening or mitigating them with the resources available. 

Red Teamer 

This is along the lines of penetration testing but with little to no rules and is focused more on specific targets like "gain access to this database by whatever means" or simulate what advanced persistent threats (like Hafnium and REvil) may try to execute on your network. This role requires a lot of experience and is likely to include phishing and physical entry to the location to test overall security. 

Digital Forensics or Malware Analyst/Engineer 

A specialist role that focuses on post-incident analysis. Your function is to take apart malware and figure out how it works or dive deep into memory and disk data that is assumed to be hard to find/disassemble and recover the pieces. This role requires years of experience and likely only in public sectors or very profitable tech/fintech/health companies. 

A Security+ cert may get you some more screening interviews by recruiters for entry level jobs, and may be required for certain federal/public sector positions.

If you're not taking a bootcamp or a graduate program, a certificate is a great way to demonstrate your interest and has a lower cost.

It gives you a good broad range of theoretical knowledge but you'll still need to supplement this with hands-on training (self-taught or paid) to be effective at work.

It may be necessary to get for advancement or pay raises after you're employed, and may be required for public sector work.

CISSP is for managerial/supervisory positions and requires actual job experience that must be vetted by an awarded CISSP holder for you to receive yours.

The CISSP cert could show demonstrated interest for getting into cyber, but there are better/more appropriate pursuits like Security+, Bootcamps, and self-teaching.

If you're interested in penetration testing or going the offensive route, this is a great certificate to go after currently.

It will highly increase your interview rate and should provide base skills to be ahead in technical interviews, but won't guarantee you a job as it does not currently test for lateral movement and complete active directory exploitation which is the majority of what you’ll encounter on the job.

Supplement pursuit of this cert with a lot of focus on Windows and Active Directory exploitation self-teaching/paid-teaching to make up for missed areas and you’ll be set up for success. 

CTF stands for "Capture the Flag" where you need to find a pattern of text on the system like "LE-R99451-13375"  These text patterns require you to use your knowledge of operating systems to traverse abnormal system configurations and permissions in order to find them. CTFs test on your ability to find "abnormal" configurations... however these will likely not be "common" misconfigurations as seen in the real world. They are the closest thing to "Cyber Olympics" that is currently out there.