Hey everybody welcome to the next video.
We're gonna be talking about certifications in this particular video.
Now certifications are normally at the end of a course of some kind.
That that shows and validates a testing of a certain skill set.
Now there's thousands of certifications out there somewhere.
Some are more in well-known standing in the security community.
Some are not.
And there's a lot of them out there and knowing which ones to pick from which ones are industry recognize
which ones are job postings actually going out and taking a look at.
There's there's just a lot of options out there.
Now the stance of certificate getting a certificate or certification or not.
So from a professional standpoint it really depends on what you're trying to do.
Now certifications are great when you're trying to get that initial bit of knowledge.
Maybe you're just getting into the field maybe something like security plus or network plus to kind
of get your feet wet with networking and security and just kind of getting your feet wet a little bit
and that's fine.
However don't expect those alone to land you a job.
There's no shortage.
There's no certification at the moment as far as I'm aware of that.
That will just automatically lead to a job.
You still have to pass the interview process.
So doing certifications that you just brain dump the all the answers that could possibly be asked and
you just base it on memory and not on actually understanding what the question is and what the answer
really is and why you're going to find yourself running into a lot more problems during the job interview
stage because you might be able to remember everything that somebody said in a book but you might know
the answer for it.
But if you don't understand why they made that distinction why they chose the way they did why choosing
this waste better than this way under what circumstances.
That's what's going to set you apart from everybody else that has the same certificate that might have
just brain dumped the exam and there's other exams such as like offensive securities certifications
that don't have a A B C or D.
It's a real hands on tests and a lot of certifications are starting to move away from multiple choice
answers and actually showing the knowledge because those seem to be more well recognized and more well
received by the security community because they're not easy to pass and that doesn't mean make it sort
of just take certification courses because they're hard.
You take it for the step of knowledge to get to that end point the certificate at the end is just a
piece of paper for you for someone else to recognize what you've done as far as you as an individual
you should look at certificates as nothing more than just a stepping stone of knowledge that you're
learning.
So when you go through that course forget about the certificate for a minute and just focus on learning
what it's there to teach you.
Once you learned what is there to teach you the certificate course is just a little bonus.
They throw in at the end and that's specifically true when you talk to somebody that does OSTP or OSCE
or any of the offensive security courses it tends to be more on the.
You ask somebody you're probably gonna get the answer of it's more on the knowledge that you've gained
through the time of your course than the certification at the very end at the end of the day it's just
a piece of paper on your resume or on your LinkedIn profile or whatever you want to use.
And there's a choice on whether you should get something or not.
Now the way I normally go about this question is when you're starting out it's good to get them and
get your foot in the door it get you through what we call the in the industry the H.R. filter.
So that's when when recruiters go through and start looking to resume as if they don't have you don't
have experience on your resume.
The next thing they're going to do is look for certifications in your schooling.
Right.
So if you don't have any experience in security for example and you don't have any experience in I.T.
and you don't know you and you're just going to school you might not even get an email about a job.
And it's very common.
I get probably 30 or 40 a week asking me to apply for different positions.
Once you start getting in the industry you get that experience on your belt you start building up your
resume.
You'll start noticing people will contact you and not the other way around.
But when you first start you're going to have to contact them not just the way it is but getting those
certificates or certifications on your resume.
It's going to be the quickest way to get you noticed quickly.
The problem is is if you just do brain dumps you're going to run into problems where you have you get
to the interview process and you can't answer the questions which becomes then there's a big problem
with that.
You don't want that to continue.
So that's kind of my my difference there between should you get it should you not entirely depends on
the situation.
But what I'm going to show you guys is the order of certifications that I would recommend going through
if you are just starting out.
Now keep in mind this is nothing but you maybe have a little bit of I.T. experience or you want to or
you're going to school for I.T. or security or something in the I.T. space.
Now the first thing I recommend getting is network plus network plus is a come to certification and
it gives you a pretty good basic understanding of what networking is and how it works.
It's not a fully in-depth like CCMA is for Cisco but this will get you get your feet wet with networking
essentially kind of what I've went through in the course so far with you it is pretty close to what
you're going to find but I still recommend getting network plus as a starting point.
The next one you're gonna want to do is security plus this one literally just builds off of the network
plus there's a lot of things that have some overlap but this is especially for you going in.
Anybody wanting to go into the government the DADT 570 compliance so as the job certain jobs require
certain certifications before you can get to a level and go in and the government space.
Now I don't know everything about the government space but I know that if you start looking at job postings
for it you're going to start seeing that trend where it's requires X requires y just to get up to the
next level.
So security plus is a good foundation for security.
If you haven't really touched security before now if you have touched security you've touched a little
bit of networking.
What I want you to go ahead and skip those you can get them if you want but we're looking at accelerating
that career pretty quickly.
Now the next one I want you guys to focus on is OSTP now.
Might you might think.
OK well I've just gone through this course.
The red team blueprint is that is that enough.
Well if you want to the Red Team blueprint you have everything you need to start this course.
It's I can't recommend it enough.
I've went through it I've been there I've done that.
It's it's a challenging course but the biggest thing is determination.
It's long as you have the ability to go out and learn something new or look further into a subject you
can pass this course.
This course is not difficult in the stretch of security.
It is very difficult in persistence.
So as long as you're persistent and you have the ability to self teach to self learn by taking those
extra steps you can pass the certification.
And when this certification starts landing on your resume people will start contacting you.
It's not guaranteed but that's normally what happens.
You'll start contacting you.
And it allows you to get that extra foot in the door because a lot of job requirements for security
engineers and general information security offensive security engineers the red teaming rolls doesn't
matter.
You're going to see OSTP in some way shape or form on these certificates.
Now if you've passed OSTP Let's assume you've got that out of the bag.
The next thing you should work on is CISPA.
Now this one is going to be a little bit you're going to have different answers when it comes up to
see ISIS before.
For some people a lot of people it's a management certification in a nutshell it really is but this
is something I would recommend getting later in the career once you've gotten a little bit more experience
because there is experience requirements when it comes to this.
So I put this one here based on what I would do if I already had some years of I.T. experience that
I've touched a little bit of security over the years.
This is where you would go.
And this is where I would recommend going having that extra CSP certification in some cases might allow
you to push yourself into a management path much quicker than you would have expected before.
And also might be able to get you up up a level or two when you go in for that job and you should be
like OK I've got CISPA I got OSTP I've gotten that plus security plus I've got some experience I know
what I'm talking about.
You have a little bit more leverage because you can show a little bit more as a professional brand.
So I recommend getting CISPA and getting that out of the way as soon as possible.
But there is a four to five year work requirement that can be substituted so you can't take the pre
version of this and get it out of the way.
But once you have the experience I recommend just sitting down and getting this one.
For those of you who are just starting off and maybe you've done.
Network plus security plus needed OSTP you're only a year in to really look working in security.
Don't worry about this just yet.
Get your years of experience in first before you start focusing on CISPA now.
The next thing is OSCE.
Now that is not the one I'm looking for.
See.
Security.
So OSCE is as you can call it kind of the next step above OSCE.
This focuses more on export development.
So this is something that you want to do.
I'm leaving this one as optional in my case of of ranking them for you.
And the reason being is because this one is fairly difficult but if you're not focused on export development
and that's not your forte it might not be worth your time to go ahead and do.
I'm currently in the process of finishing this course up and I'm sitting for my exams.
So fingers crossed on that one.
But the point is it's not a difficult course but it depends on experience.
It's something again.
All of offensive security courses do you have the willingness to learn outside of what they're teaching
you just like in this course.
I designed this course in a very similar way.
You need to take the.
You need to learn stuff on the outside look into further topics.
That's how you progress as a security engineer.
So this is the last one that I have on my list and you might notice that I never added any Sands courses
on here which is if you're familiar already with the industry you might have noticed why I didn't put
this on here.
The reason being is everything recertification I've named you is within the realm of reasonability on
price for most people with a little bit of saving.
I think the most expensive course on that list was Oh I see.
Now if you fail the exams multiple times then any of them can reach a pretty high in price.
But when you're looking at Sands courses here you're looking at four or five six seven eight nine thousand
dollars depending on the course because they're all trained live in person.
So that has a good that's that's good.
But unless you have an organization paying for it or you happen to have the money available to just
blow 10 15 20 thousand dollars on sand certifications I would wait until you're already in industry
then have your employer pay for it if they have that type of program put in place.
So I hope this help makes a little bit more sense on certifications.
I would recommend getting net plus in security plus out of the way while you're going to school.
And once you've gotten those out of the way just dig through put put the six to nine months or six to
60 to 90 days in four OCP and get it out of the way that's going gonna give you such a jumpstart in
trying to get your career going forward.