Working as a Security Consultant with an IT company, provides you with a wider responsibility and the role differs from company to company. One moment you may be asked to help develop and see to production as an example a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system while you are also working on a Multi-layered and vendor security solution. Documenting what you are doing and keeping track of your day objective is important so that you can keep track of your progress. The job requires attending meetings where you will offer advice or direction from a security standpoint or go back and do more findings to give a better response in the next meeting. You will be doing this while having communications up and down. The question now is, what does it take to be a Security Consultant? What do you need to learn and where do you start?
My first advice is follow your interest and passion, because no matter what you choose there will always be challenges. It is the Interest and the passion that you have that will see you through those difficult days and those difficult days will come when you will want to give up.
I started my working career as a Network administrator after finishing University. I was managing a small network but am always looking for new challenges. I sat for many professional exams within the Cisco space CCNA, CCNP but then I took an interest in Security, and I started learning and reading for security related exams. I got my next job as a Network and Security administrator. I learned from early on that Networking and Security go hand in hand, knowledge of one complement the other. I changed the direction of my career from this point to security. I sat and passed more Professional exams like TOGAF, an Architecture exam that made me work as a Network and Security Architect in many industries where I do data centre designs. The highlight of my career is leading the teams that set up 16 Data Centers that support over 45 million telephone subscribers in Africa.
There are other areas of development that you should also consider while starting your career. Have a career 1yr, 5yr and 10yr plan. Set achievable goals, you may not achieve all your goals but give it your best and don’t beat yourself up when you are not meeting your set objectives. Dedicate at least an hour to reading about your career on weekends. Surround yourself with people of the same mind who share the same career goals like you. Even when you are having fun, there will be the occasional discussion around career that will benefit you. Information is power. Knowing what to learn and being an expert on it at the early stage will give you an edge. Your career related friends can be a channel to vent all your frustrations to with a view at looking at a solution.
Security Consultant is a wide role, and you need to prepare for the challenges. If you hear about a Security breach in the news or on social media, try to know the details and be better informed. Work hard, stay on track with your schedule and reading plans. Hard work always pays. Some of the most important advice I will give is, you can’t know everything, always tell yourself you don’t know it all. Don’t feel let down if you are just learning something others have learned. There are a lot of people who don’t know half of what you know. Reward yourself for every success and pick yourself up from every failure. Remember you are the only one that can stop you.
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