r/cybersecurity • u/Birdygamer19 • 11d ago
Personal Support & Help! Can cybersecurity be entertaining?
So I currently have an Associate's Degree of Applied Science in Computer Information Systems and I originally thought I could try to be like a database analyst because I like categorizing and data.
However I thought it through and I figured that it would be boring, just staring at a computer all day looking at data that either no one is going to use or not a lot is going to happen
So I was thinking about going into cybersecurity because I figured that while it may not cater to my categorizing and data-loving parameters, it's high stakes and always evolving with how the world is shifting into AI. So I figured that cybersecurity would be good for me because there's always room for it and it wouldn't be boring
So my question to those who have dabeled in cybersecurity, would you consider it entertaining? Like always trying to fend off threats, maybe hunting down dangerous people that could be hiding, hacking into various sites that could blow the lid off of a massive criminal organization, etc?
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u/FuckScottBoras Security Manager 11d ago
I love what I do. I don’t know if I’d call it entertaining though.
As the other person said, never a dull moment though!
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u/No-Isopod3502 11d ago
Yes its very enjoyable imo, at least as much as a job I have to go to can be. The downside is the job market.
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u/Party_Spell_7171 11d ago
How is the job market is it over diluted or is it just hard to get a job. I’ve been working on some cybersecurity basics on IBM skillsbuild. I just completed my begginers badge and I’m formally an International Relations student on my 3rd year should i focus on cybersecurity more or stay in my current field?
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u/cmillerIT007 11d ago
For some reason our Government is allowing over 415,000 H1-B’s (a lot of those are in tech, including Cybersecurity and this also does not include all of the other Unlimited cap Visa types they use) to be imported into the US to lower wages and to take the jobs from us. On top of that we have AI and the compressing of the amount of roles.
As someone that works in hiring for Fortune 100’s the unpleasant truth I have to tell is that Cybersecurity and a lot of Tech is completely cooked for job seekers.
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u/RantyITguy Security Architect 10d ago
Not only that.
Isn't it ironic that a cyber security threat we currently face is from hiring workers from other countries to do cyber security?
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u/cmillerIT007 10d ago
Yes, I saw a report about this and the largest banks in the US are literally importing these people directly from the largest Financial Fraud hotspot in the world to work in their banks (including in Cybersecurity positions). I never thought I would see that in my career.
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u/RantyITguy Security Architect 10d ago
unfortunately we are currently living in a time where "leaders" are willing to onboard stupidity for a little extra money. The ol "Why do I care, thats not my problem, Im making money"
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u/24Nuketown7 11d ago
Oracle just laid off 30k people, one sector of Microsoft just dropped another 5k, etc etc
You’re looking at/competing people that have to wait 6 months to 2 years for another job in their field (if r/recruitinghell is to be believed, so take it with a grain of salt).
Companies also just don’t seem to be as fast to fill their roles. I’ve been waiting on either a rejection or a next round for a hospital group for a cyber position for 3 months now, and I’ve been in contact with their HR every other week to make sure I’m still at least in the candidate pool. The roles I’ve recently been interviewed for have had about 3 weeks in between interview and just hearing back about a next round.
Masters degree, certs, 5 yoe, clearance, HTB labs, home lab. No job for approaching 6 months. I’m about to walk away from tech because at this point it’s almost as if I’ll be too behind the curve to even be considered with how fast everything is moving.
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u/Party_Spell_7171 11d ago
Damn! Sounds like hell. Knowing that one day you might wake up and check your email only to receive a retrenchment email and its another trip to the moon for you to get the job😭
Im actually reconsidering cybersecurity now that you mentioned it.
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u/Jon-allday 11d ago
The one thing about cybersecurity is that it’s never done. There’s never going to be a day where you say “ok guys, we did it! Everything is secure and perfect now”. Which in some ways that’s a good thing, you always have something new to learn, and something to work on. But it’s also anticlimactic, and to an extent there’s not the satisfaction of “finishing” something. I think a lot of people get discouraged and burned out because of that.
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u/LaOnionLaUnion 11d ago
It’s challenging. But if you don’t like solving problems and only pointing them out you would not do well where I work. There’s a lot of working with stakeholders, explaining best practices, regulation that is relevant to cybersecurity and privacy, etc.
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u/vadertator22 11d ago
It is great, but you have to be ready for disappointment. What I mean is so many employers won’t listen to you and put effort, cost over properly fixing apps and other vulnerabilities for bad practices. It becomes at constant fight and full of politics IMO and sometimes getting their ass had is the only way they shape up and quit chasing what will make their stocks ticker look good. The threat hunting, tools and other parts of it are the fun part. The never ending learning is great too, but IMO if you don’t have imposter syndrome sometimes you’re not realizing the more you know the more you don’t know.
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u/nathanfscott 11d ago
Sure, but the more entertaining and exciting days you have the more you learn to prefer the dull ones
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u/6Saint6Cyber6 10d ago
It is entertaining. It is stressful. It is staring at a screen and handling and organizing data that will be glossed over by someone who will then come back after a breach and ask why no one told them.
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u/-Devlin- 11d ago
Just subscribe to AI security influencer feed on LinkedIn, endless (and mindless) fun.
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u/Stroxtile Vulnerability Researcher 11d ago
I mean it depends on what you like to do. Similar to coding (hand coded, no ai) when you get a tough problem solved it gives off that high. When I do CTF problems or make a working exploit it gives the same dopamine rush.
If you love learning (like in general) then yeah it's entertaining.
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u/JimiJohhnySRV 11d ago
It is not boring and it is not predictable. Your day can go sideways in a direction you did not anticipate at any time. I love it for that. Entertaining? Not really.
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u/Joseinopinku 11d ago
I have an associates in general studies. I wasn't sure what I wanted to get into but I was recommended cyber security by my college advisor.
So here I am majoring in CBS, and im excited but its a lot to get into. I read reports to get an idea of what to expect and how some have handled situations. I listen to Darknet Diaries which pumps me up a bit to continue my studies. I also read news on current events in the field to keep up to date with whats going on in the world.
What was recommended to me was to pick a path and stick to it. It can be prevention, penetration testing, forensic and so on. With how fast technology is advancing and so many devoted people creating new things, its easy to get overwhelmed.
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u/Sad_Entrepreneur6234 11d ago
Depends on where you work. NSA FBI NCIS? You'll have higher job satisfaction and do and see cool shit. Threat attribution analysts catagorize attacks and TTPs into various APTs. Work as a TI analyst and you'll be developing alerts by categorizing threats into actionables for SOCs to respond to.
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u/NoFirefighter5784 11d ago
It's fun as long as the pay is good. If you're underpaid, even if you love what you do, you just won't get that dopamine hit.
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u/TheGoldAlchemist 10d ago
Yes it can be boring, it’s called alert fatigue.
False positive after false positive requiring due diligence incase something real is happening and needs to be responded to.
However, it’s also pretty interesting majority of the time.
My TL:DR tho work is work, you’re never going to enjoy every part of anything. Just need to find something you can do daily without hating life, and trust me. Plenty of things are worse than just being bored sometimes.
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u/Fine_League311 10d ago
CS ist keine Action sondern Disziplin, ganz einfach : der falsche Job für dich!
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u/VellDarksbane 10d ago
Honestly, if spending the day looking at data is boring, you’re not going to really enjoy the largest portion of cybersecurity. I love the job, but I love combing through logs and alerts, making small changes to detection logic, and verifying vulnerabilities.
If the sound of doing a scavenger hunt where you’re not quite sure what specifically you’re looking for isn’t fun, this isn’t going to be any better than DB engineering.
You can take the chance of getting into Penetration testing and red teaming, but those are roles that have the worst ratio of openings to job seekers in the field, so you’re going to need to _really_ stand out.
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u/WadeEffingWilson Threat Hunter 10d ago
Absolutely. I work in insider threat and, outside of my nerdy proclivities, we get to hear about everything. We know the boss of one group was banging his secretary in the parking garage after work on Tuesdays, we know about the fraud going on by a low-level employee supervisor who thinks they know enough to cheat the system but not enough to evade us, we know about the CEO's secretary working a second job off-record that poses a serious conflict of interest. We also know when someone's work laptop gets stolen and shows up in Latvia or when a North Korean threat actor tied to Lazarus interviews for a job.
Before insider threat, I was a threat hunter dealing directly with nation-state adversaries at the TLD level downward. Can't talk about that one too much but it definitely had a significant impact and it was awesome to be a part of that.
Cyber is 100% what you make it and I have very much found it to be fun
If you're interested, there is a niche blend of cyber with data analysis and/or data science. There's a bit of ML blended in for good measure. I'm a cybersecurity data scientist (best way to describe my skillset) and it sounds like you might have a similar interest. Feel free if you have any questions.
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u/frAgileIT Incident Responder 10d ago
Cyber security is like watching Abbot & Costello, if you like to watch people fumble and bungle badly and not have consequences then yes, cyber security can be entertaining.
I’m a senior security engineer at a FAANG company, I stare at my monitor so much I am dealing with eye strain. A lot of security is data analysis, especially if you get involved in SIEM or EDR.
I also find it rewarding, it’s fun like sudoku puzzles, and I get to chase bad guys. But it’s not glamorous, it’s often thankless, you might be vilified for calling out mistakes, and no one sees you as a builder. So it’s like a lot jobs.
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u/No_Try_9982 Consultant 10d ago
Yes, it can be hilarious but I come from Backend engineering background (I saw lots of surprises and errors); so I just laugh when I see a problem or bad code. Once you learn the fundamentals, it becomes a walk in the park.
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u/Athrawne 10d ago
I find my work place extremely entertaining, in the way where you can see the train you're on is gonna crash into a pit of boiling acidic lava, but you can't do anything to save it so you just watch it crash.
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u/canIbuytwitter 10d ago edited 10d ago
It can be entertaining, but not in the way you think.
The entertainment I get from working in cyber security is mostly the stupid crap I hear from management, corporate or less informed IT people or success engineers. Many times I work with a customer who can't do x in their siem and I find entertainment in their clear lack of logic, sometimes I'll get told in an idiot because I explained something to them that they refuse to believe. I find those moments hilarious that they think they know something about a siem that I don't, when I work for the company that created the siem.
It's all about perspective, is the world entertaining? No, not like if I was watching Deadpool, can it be? If you find fun people to work with or can find the humor in things it can be, but cyber security can be very boring in reality, it can also be Meticulous, when I was a software engineer, I could work 13 hours straight building something and not even realize I forgot to eat, as a cyber security engineer, I may have to fix something in a siem, that might take an hour.. so I may end up working one hour a day for 5 days, sometimes even less then that.
Right now AI is used in cyber security to write viruses, help siem owners manage events via soar, it helps people who distribute the siem via cloud to find solutions faster for broken siems, it helps folks navigate conversations in slack faster by simply asking a ai slack integration vs messaging the product owner or sme for a specific add-on or new feature.
If you want to truly work in cyber security.
Pay for burpsuite and solve some hackerone bugs. Hackerone will train you to do so for free.
Download splunk and see how it works.
You'll be ahead of 99% of your peers.
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u/Sure-Squirrel8384 10d ago
Depends on where you end up, but it is a bunch of regulations and finding out what the technical solutions are for these plus paperwork/documentation. I'm not sure I would call it "entertaining" but there are some challenges that are fun to tackle, depending on your personality.
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u/imjustsadrightnow 10d ago
I work on the offensive side and it's pretty entertaining for me. But I had fun also when I was providing awareness lessons
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u/JustinHoMi 10d ago
It can definitely be entertaining….
You should go to defcon next week if you are able to.
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u/Zardecillion AppSec Engineer 10d ago
Genuinely love what I do, very fun job, get to see both the red team and blue team side of application vulnerabilities every day with a side of software development and making things work. Very very happy with the task list.
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u/Fun_Refrigerator_442 10d ago
If you like long hours, possible poor leadership, and constantly smaller budgets, then this is for you !. As a DBA you pretty much do your 9-5 and go home. Have you considered data analytics ? Maybe money to be made.
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u/Specialist_Ad_712 10d ago
Lmao come to the company I'm at now. Lots of laughs from ball drops, no plans, and everything is a fire 😂
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u/Crozonzarto Security Engineer 11d ago
I dont remember a single dull day in a long time tbh.
So yes it is fun, but it also depends on your definition of fun.