Posted on Jun 13, 2016
SPC(P) Information Security (Is) Analyst
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Would you say a standard 4 year university is the way to go or a technical school that focuses on the curriculum (meaning there are no pre-reqs like english, art, etc).

I'm taking advice from members on RP and pursuing higher education in my field when I'm young, but I want to get the MOST education, and not more SCHOOLING, if that makes sense. My Army goal is to go Warrant
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Responses: 10
PO1 John Miller
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Pursue certifications that are consistent with your career path. Make sure you're working in a field that those certs apply to otherwise you're going to lose that knowledge.
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SPC(P) Information Security (Is) Analyst
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I'm also doing that, studying for the CISSP that I can take next year and the Six Sigma certs
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PO1 John Miller
PO1 John Miller
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CASP is another good one to have, as are the higher-end CISCO certs. I've got a friend, Navy vet, who works for CISCO and he got hired on because of his CISCO certs, CCNA and I believe CCNP. He now has every CISCO cert known to man.
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SSgt Ryan Sylvester
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Alright, I've just gone through this myself, so here's my insight. First, as PO1 Miller said, certifications are critical in this field. You need certs, though some certs you can only get after so much time spent in the field. Second, be mindful of what you actually want to do and find a degree program that matches, because degrees do matter here. If you want to be standard IT, any simple IT Associate's Degree will do. If you want to specialize, find a 4 year degree program that matches what you want to get into. For example, if you want to get into InfoSec, look into an Information Assurance program. That will give you all kinds of management functions on top of IT administration. Third, pick up programming. I don't care what language it is, just get used to it. You will have scripts you need to at least modify, and probably create. Coding is a vital function these days. Fourth, databases. Start learning them, start creating them, start using them. Start making scripts to input data from files into a database.
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PO1 Cryptologic Technician Collection
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When I read technical school, I am thinking "Associates Degree" and there is still GENEDs to worry about. For what its worth, I have a Master's in IT and am a software developer and I was able to breeze through a lot of my Master's program based on what I learned OJT. That being said, there is a lot of good foundational stuff that you learn in school.

The thing with certificates in my experience is that they don't necessarily cover fundamentals and focus more so on the current technologies or trends. Security+ was a mix of that with some general security practices plus some fundamentals.

I would try to get some sort of degree. I think there are CS Associate's and there may even be Cyber or network security Associate's. That, or you may want to look at undergraduate certificates. Those don't have GENED requirements.
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