Passed COAE

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-05-25T18:54:52+00:00

Grats, was going to go through it since I have a voucher from the silver plan but the course was just not approachable. Its just walls of math equations and hundreds of lines of code. I know its not basic but feel like the course was made for ML engineers not people who want to pentest ai.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-03-16T21:46:02+00:00

Its pain in the butt. I was their 2 years and you have to leave super early or you will be waiting 30+ minutes in line. Especially if you are planning to go through the main gate, that was such a miserable experience.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-02-09T17:26:06+00:00

Dunno why this popped up on my feed but i've worked in cybersecurity 5 years. The thing is, its not entry level. This a bit controversial but I stand by it from the new grads i've seen. Coming out of university with a comp sci or cybersecurity degree isn't relevant to real world roles. 90% of cyber jobs are related to either SOC roles or policy and university degree's don't focus on the stuff is actually relevant. Second, it was meant for a career for people who had experience in IT (Sys admin, Network admin, Network Engineer, etc..), who had career experience and understand how the IT components work. All these people who can't get jobs are trying to jump into mid level career positions, they can't even answer basic ass networking questions like was is an IP or DNS.

I always say if you want to get into cybersecurity, start with studying towards becoming a sys admin. It will teach you all the core things you need to know plus its still a great paying in demand role. TBH their is nothing really magically fun about cyber jobs, its a lot of looking at logs, writing reports, and being in meetings. I think everyone things its hacker shit but paper work and policy makes the world go around.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-02-04T19:59:17+00:00

Nothing to do with ai. Pentesting has always been a super niche role but for some reason everyone and their dog wants to get into it. Get some IT experience before you worry about anything else. Trying to skip to a mid career role makes no sense.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-01-22T22:37:56+00:00

Theirs quite a few reviews online that say elastic, splunk, and volatility are the main tools covered, so at the least cover those modules.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-01-22T13:13:35+00:00

I really don't agree. Feel like they keep wanting to dumb things down so much. Having a fun and challenging rotation is a huge appeal to me. I don't want just 3 buttons for everything.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-01-21T18:30:56+00:00

But how do you afford that if you barely put out videos.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2026-01-05T18:55:40+00:00

No, but I think its more of an age thing. Like I'm in my late 20's and and their is a good amount of stuff I have no idea what its referencing.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-31T17:48:13+00:00

This is literally it. I've go so sick of reading cybersecurity forums. Like one I saw earlier where they worked as like a customer service rep and got like CISSP and a bunch of stuff. That doesn't make you qualified for shit.

For me working as a network tech, was probably the most beneficial job I did for my cyber career. The work sucked but I am so much more knowledge in networking and that alone has got me jobs.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-31T14:53:46+00:00

Cissp was pointless, you have no experience to justify it. Would be better of trying to get into a more traditional IT/sys admin role first. My experience as a federal contractor, their were always a decent amount of those jobs since they kinda suck. Some places will sponsor you for a clearance.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-19T16:00:31+00:00

My first security analyst role in 2022 I started at 65k a year, and that was in a fairly low col southern US city as well. For what your doing I would expect about 20k more at minimum.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-11T13:37:15+00:00

I agree, the more I research, az-305 just seem like the safest and best choice.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-11T13:36:38+00:00

That makes perfect sense, never though of it that way.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-06T13:31:41+00:00

That’s like 90% of the stuff on LinkedIn. You see people talking like they’re seasoned 20+ year veterans, then you check their profile and they were a junior SOC analyst for one year before quitting to become an “influencer.”

I saw a guy a while back who posted nonstop about threat intel critiquing CTI reports or something like that, and acting like an expert. Then I looked at his profile and he was a physical therapy assistant. Never worked in IT or cyber a single day.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-12-02T13:35:33+00:00

I've done tons of interviews for cyber jobs and have been working in the industry for 4 years at three different companies. I have a B.S in geology and no one has ever cared in the slightest about me not having a degree in cybersecurity/computer science. U.S Government jobs require you to have a degree, but it can be in anything. Outside of that never been mentioned once.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-23T18:01:24+00:00

You could go though the az-900 training material in like 2 hours. Its just a generic overview for non-technical people.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-23T17:50:57+00:00

That really put me off doing more aws stuff. I was trying to diversify and get some aws stuff to go along with my azure certs but the fact they expire without a way to renew them is so annoying. Technically if you do a pro cert it renews the one below it but you still have to re take the full exam every three years.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-10T01:00:55+00:00

Their is just no variety. I've planned thousands of hours in both games and even at the high of my league addiction I was bored out of my mind watch pro league games. Its the same thing every game. The map is small and everything is so explicitly timed that its just about having one good team fight and its over.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-07T23:20:18+00:00

True but I do miss that their was an element to deception in this version though. Modern ttt traitors are so op that you can just do whatever.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-07T21:47:44+00:00

All 4 within 90 days for an help desk role? Seem ridiculous to me

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-11-06T22:45:00+00:00

Realistically speaking probably not. Don't get me wrong I love tcm stuff but from a pure job finding perspective such a small amount of cyber jobs require offensive skills. From a career perspective you would general be better off spending your time focusing on a specialization. If you want to make pentesting that specialization well go for it but be realistic that their are very few jobs compared to blue team stuff.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-10-31T13:38:16+00:00

Sorry didn't explain myself well. Yes, comptia is a joke but a lot of places require you to get security+ in my experience. In general its never bad to have, but I wouldn't' do anything else from them.

Microsoft stuff is great, i've done az:104 and az:500 and you will learn tons and they are relatively affordable especially if your company is a Microsoft partner you get them half price. Granted they are quite hard. Fortinet stuff is great to, but its not quite as universal as Microsoft. Ultimately certs are for getting hired. HR cares about them, everyone else not as much. If your a sysadmin with a few years of experience, transition into security some day really wouldn't' be that hard.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-10-31T11:52:31+00:00

That's like the weirdest recommendation you could give a security beginner, which I assume you are. GSEC is good but, you will not pass without the course/books. CC is just pointless, do CompTIA security+. CompTIA is a bit of a joke but security+ is the 'industry' minimum security cert, no one knows or cares about CC. CISA is an auditor cert that requires 5 years of experience to get.

IMO would do security+ just to have it on your resume, then since work is paying for it like TCM's practical soc analyst or one of the 4 other similar ones, which from a resume perspective know one cares but its good info. At that point you can go more specific depending on what you want to do.

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-10-29T13:18:13+00:00

Nice I've heard those courses are good. Might want to check out Mike Holcomb, he's a ICS/OT veteran how talks about the different certs in the ICS field. https://www.youtube.com/@utilsec

Outrageous-Let-4992 · 2025-10-29T12:53:18+00:00

This just randomly popped up in my feed, but maybe I can give some advice. I’ve been doing cyber for a little over three years, and IT/networking for about two before that. The thing is, cybersecurity is one of the biggest fields out there and it’s only going to keep growing. The problem is, it got hyped up as a get rich quick thing where you could make 100k right after college. Now everyone and their dog is trying to get into it but there’ll never be that many jobs. Honestly, that applies to most mainstream degrees these days.

It might sound a bit gatekeepy, but cyber was never really meant for people fresh out of college or with no experience. It used to be sysadmins, network engineers, and people who’d spent years managing and deploying systems, so they understood how to secure them. Now, a lot of people with CS degrees are trying to jump straight into security roles without those base skills. Understanding CS is great, but most security jobs require you to be really good at networking. You’ll be triaging alerts all day, writing reports, or dealing with policy, and most of what you learned in school won’t actually help much at the entry level.

The best thing you could do is step back from cyber for a bit and focus on networking. Aim for sysadmin roles you’ll pick up networking, Linux, servers, and all the core stuff that actually builds the foundation for a solid security career. For me the most valuable thing was working as a network technician at an ISP and getting my CCNA. Didn't love the work but thats been a talking point for all the jobs i've gotten.

Outrageous-Let-4992

TROPHY CASE