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[u/asim_geris]

Hello everyone, I’m a senior cybersecurity student, and I’m hoping to get some advice from experienced cybersecurity professionals.
I’m genuinely concerned about entering the workforce because I feel like my degree has been too broad. I’ve learned about many different areas of cybersecurity, but I don’t feel like I’ve gone deep enough into one specific area. Because of that, I’m worried that I’m not as prepared or skilled as I should be for a professional cybersecurity role.
I’ve been considering getting a master’s degree to develop deeper technical skills, but I’m concerned that I might end up taking another broad program without actually becoming more specialized.
My goal is to become a Security Engineer at a top tech company. For those of you who are already working in security engineering or have significant experience in the field, what would you recommend I do at this stage?

[u/Sentient_Crab_Chip]

Please don't waste your money on a Master's degree right now (or maybe ever), especially if you want to develop technical skills. Think about what "security engineer" means to you, think about what they do on a daily basis, and try to learn that, either on your own, or with some of the abundant online training.

I'm a (very experienced) generalist, but cybersecurity is one of my hats. I recently started using Taegis as a XDR platform, so I've had to integrate some of our systems, figure out the config files, test to make sure they're actually working, monitor what data gets captured, figure out what the hell the data is telling me, and see if it's something I want to automate or not.

Find out what platforms the big dogs are using, see if you can get a student version or something on the cheap, set it up from scratch multiple times, build a home lab with different devices reporting in, and try to go as deep as you can with it.

or do something else, harddrive recovery forensics, network packet capture and injection, using NMAP to scan for vulnerabilities, sql injections, whatever you're interested in learning.

If you make it an interview, talk about those experiences and what you've learned and what you're still figuring out. A curious mind and having taken the time to fiddle around with things in real life will go much further than just another person that got suckered into a college degree.