Chapter 1, Importance of Cybersecurity, focuses on the importance of cybersecurity, and will help anyone who wants to become a cybersecurity professional to understand what is expected of them.
Chapter 2, Security Evolution – From Legacy to Advanced, to ML and AI, discusses the evolution of cybersecurity and the future of the integration of cybersecurity with machine learning and artificial intelligence integration.
Chapter 3, Learning Cybersecurity Technologies, covers what you need to learn to be a cybersecurity professional, with all the paths that are available in the job market today.
Chapter 4, Skills We Need for a Cybersecurity Career, looks at the job market to find the cybersecurity roles that organizations are advertising and the in-demand skills that you can learn in order to change to or build your career in cybersecurity.
Chapter 5, Attacker Mindset, explores attackers, traits and their way of thinking to find out what drives a hacker.
Chapter 6, Understanding Reactive, Proactive, and Operational Security, covers what reactive, proactive, and operational cyber defenses are, what job the pillars of security are, and how you can position yourself to choose the optimal skills for you and your company.
Chapter 7, Networking, Mentoring, and Shadowing, discusses the importance of these three essentials to your career.
Chapter 8, Cybersecurity Labs, covers self-assessment and learning skills, ways to help you skill up fast, and some key resources to help you build your own practice lab.
Chapter 9, Knowledge Check and Certifications, looks at the need to be certified and how you can choose the right places and certifications to study, as there are far too many options based on the real-life experiences of the author and the experts who have contributed to the book.
Chapter 10, Security Intelligence Resources, focuses on existing security intelligence resources that can be publicly and commercially consumed to achieve higher standards of security for organizations. As a beginner in security, this information will always come in very handy from a ramp-up perspective.
Chapter 11, Expert Opinions on Getting Started with Cybersecurity, contains contributions by academics from universities, such as Oxford and Charles Sturt, and also experts from the field, such as Microsoft, FireEye, SAP, and Keepnet Labs, as well as training institutes, such as the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the privately owned Cqure and Dimension Data. In this chapter, they share their own journeys into cybersecurity, the steps they took, the training they had, and recommendations on how to keep your skills sharp. Besides this, some of them also share what skills they look at when they hire talent.
Chapter 12, How to Get Hired in Cybersecurity, Regardless of Your Background, covers tips and tricks on how to get a job in cybersecurity. This includes tips and tricks for interviews, how recruiters work, and how Fortune companies hire. This is the chapter that puts the book into practice.