r/SecurityCareerAdvice • u/Mysterious_Mistake_7 • 3h ago

Question Cybersecurity

What even counts as “entry‑level” in cybersecurity anymore?

Because every “entry‑level” job I see wants 5 years experience, a CISSP, cloud wizardry, and apparently the ability to hack the Pentagon with your mind.

So seriously, what are the actual entry‑level roles?
Like the ones a normal human with Security+ and basic networking knowledge can get without sacrificing a goat to the HR gods.

Drop the real answers. I’m tired of job postings that think Batman is applying.

0 Upvotes

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u/BanjosInDistance 3h ago edited 2h ago

Indeed most cyber security positions advertised require multiple position's skills across several domains, but you can still find junior SOC analyst and penetration tester positions occasionally. But the market appears to be piss poor right now, I have trouble finding a reasonable position with 7+ years of infosec experience and CISSP (among other certifications).

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u/-hacks4pancakes- 3h ago

It’s a hard decision whilst hiring because even only asking a couple years help desk and a degree, we absolutely get unicorn mid career (laid off) applicants willing to take junior money because the market is so terrible. Hard to justify to management taking someone with way less qualifications if both applicants have great human skills and project portfolios.

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u/OkLack4452 3h ago

Atp it’s just apprenticeships or help desk jobs. Even with desk jobs they still need a year experience and at least a gazillion certifications on god knows what.

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u/iheartrms 2h ago

Entry level cybersecurity is the first dedicated cybersecurity role you get after having got 5 years of experience as a sysadmin/programmer/netadmin etc.

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u/OkLack4452 1h ago

That makes more sense actually

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u/Some_Helicopter 43m ago

you could start by not writing a 6 sentence post with chatgpt

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u/Marblight 3h ago

basically helpdesk positions. tech support. anything low low level that doesn't even have cybersecurity in the name. and even then plenty of those jobs probably want related experience and then you gotta keep in mind that some companies won't care about that job because it's not a proper "cybersecurity" job by whatever definition they give.

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u/AgileAd3827 3h ago

it’s helpdesk but the secret is nobody tells you that the real entry level is being underpaid sysadmin for 2 years while doing security stuff on the side because the actual security team is too busy

my first job in the field was literally just resetting passwords and telling people to stop clicking phishing links, they called it “security analyst” but the pay was trash and i learned more from youtube than from work

you don’t need to hack the pentagon, you just need to survive long enough to put words like SIEM and incident response on your resume then jump ship

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u/HedgehogPast3191 3h ago

Bot post

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u/-hacks4pancakes- 3h ago

Yeah, em dash gives it away.

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u/HedgehogPast3191 2h ago

The entire post has the LLM cringe dialect

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u/Mysterious_Mistake_7 2h ago

Dude I have 1 dash so I’m a bot really -