Infrastructure Engineer eyeing up a move to IT Security role

KiNgPiN83 · 5 Jul 2023 at 11:10

Hi guys

Just wondering if any IT Security guys could shed a light on this for me as per the thread title?

I’ve been in IT around 18 years now with the last 10 or so spent as an Infrastructure Engineer. I currently work for a small-ish MSP in that same role. (Coming from in house IT this was a huge change in pace but I’m enjoying it and there’s always something to keep me occupied.)

Knowledge wise I ’m a Jack of all trades meaning I know a decent amount about storage, compute, cloud, email/exchange/365, networking and most recently, firewalls. (Didn’t get a lot of experience with networking and firewalls at my in house IT role due to having a team specialising in that)

With my current knowledge in mind what courses etc should I be looking at for a move to a more security focused role? Our current security guys are a mixture of an ex infrastructure engineer who is now the security manager and various apprentices. They seem to handle FW updates, AV, mail scanning, Intune/GPO security policies etc.

I’m already studying for my fortigate exams and there is a lot of generalised stuff around security but should I be looking at stuff like Security+, Azure security courses etc? Are there any other courses I’m not expecting to be useful? Like Powershell, other scripting, Linux etc.

I’m guessing larger companies may break security roles down further so maybe choosing a specific area would be best?

Any experiences good/bad, people who have moved between the disciplines, current people in security roles etc would be good to hear.

XeNoN89 · 5 Jul 2023 at 11:15

For general security I would go for ISC2 SSCP, CCSP or CISSP. Then you can focus on more vendor specific exams, like the Microsoft SC ones

peterwalkley · 5 Jul 2023 at 11:16

Can't help directly as I have to focus on the application side rather than infrastructure, but your mention of Fortigate reminded me of this: https://arstechnica.com/security/20...hed-against-critical-fortigate-vulnerability/

KiNgPiN83 · 5 Jul 2023 at 11:42

peterwalkley said:
Can't help directly as I have to focus on the application side rather than infrastructure, but your mention of Fortigate reminded me of this: https://arstechnica.com/security/20...hed-against-critical-fortigate-vulnerability/

My last place was mainly Cisco and Meraki and I hadn’t really heard much regarding Fortinet before. I’ve spent the last couple of months swapping Fortigate Firewalls out. Must’ve done nearly 20 of them and I was surprised by the amount of vulnerabilities we’ve had to keep patching…

KiNgPiN83 · 5 Jul 2023 at 11:42

XeNoN89 said:
For general security I would go for ISC2 SSCP, CCSP or CISSP. Then you can focus on more vendor specific exams, like the Microsoft SC ones

Thanks, I’ll take a look at these later on.

malachi · 5 Jul 2023 at 12:26

KiNgPiN83 said:
Hi guys

Just wondering if any IT Security guys could shed a light on this for me as per the thread title?

I’ve been in IT around 18 years now with the last 10 or so spent as an Infrastructure Engineer. I currently work for a small-ish MSP in that same role. (Coming from in house IT this was a huge change in pace but I’m enjoying it and there’s always something to keep me occupied.)

Knowledge wise I ’m a Jack of all trades meaning I know a decent amount about storage, compute, cloud, email/exchange/365, networking and most recently, firewalls. (Didn’t get a lot of experience with networking and firewalls at my in house IT role due to having a team specialising in that)

With my current knowledge in mind what courses etc should I be looking at for a move to a more security focused role? Our current security guys are a mixture of an ex infrastructure engineer who is now the security manager and various apprentices. They seem to handle FW updates, AV, mail scanning, Intune/GPO security policies etc.

I’m already studying for my fortigate exams and there is a lot of generalised stuff around security but should I be looking at stuff like Security+, Azure security courses etc? Are there any other courses I’m not expecting to be useful? Like Powershell, other scripting, Linux etc.

I’m guessing larger companies may break security roles down further so maybe choosing a specific area would be best?

Any experiences good/bad, people who have moved between the disciplines, current people in security roles etc would be good to hear.

You sound just like me, working in IT for about 18 years being the jack of all trades and trying to get into IT Security.

For the past few months, I had a few IT Security interviews but haven't succeed yet. For me, I have Sec+ (I suggest don't bother with this) A few Azure Security certs and Cisco CyberOps cert which I got back in Feb. By doing these certs I have learnt a lot and applied some to my current job as an System Engineer. So in interviews I have proof of what I have done.

Certs such as CISSP are focused on IT Security Managers, not hands on security. Also there is a requirement to be working in certain IT fields for amount of years before applying to taking those exams. You cant just study and take the exam.

Cisco Cyber Ops will give you a broad knowledge of IT security then you can pick and vendor cert from there.