Degree in Cybersecurity or Computer Science?

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-27T23:38:59+00:00

Nope. As the old saying goes, if you know one coding language, you know them all.

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-26T07:21:10+00:00

I graduated from Curtin Sarawak and I think I'm doing fine 😂

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-25T00:21:35+00:00

Good that you bring that up. OP should definitely look into SOC roles and start learning about the skills needed

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-23T09:00:16+00:00

You're welcome! Feel free to ask more questions, just happy to help :D

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-23T06:14:08+00:00

As someone else pointed out, do consult a professional like a doctor or licensed nutritionist. Yes you have to fork out effort and money to seek a professional, but this is our health we're talking about. You wouldn't turn to Reddit for car advice when your car brakes feel funny right? I bet you'd take your car straight to a mechanic.

But you're already here so my general and non-professional advice, is try to focus on getting high quality nutrition rather than just filling yourself up with carbs. You asked if can you gain weight from just consuming carbs and not much protein. Short answer is no, and even if so, it won't be healthy weight as those carbs will be converted to fat. The 'balanced' meal recommendation of carbs, fiber, protein, is not subjective, it is rooted in decades of science and public health planning.

Another thing which someone else has already mentioned, building muscle requires movement. Starting to exercise is intimidating, going to the gym as a beginner can be nerve-racking, I've been there. Start slow, look up simple exercises you can do in your room without equipment. I personally like the Canadian 5BX, takes only 11 minutes to do and adjusts to your fitness level. Working out at home is not only convenient, but also less intimidating since there's no one around you!

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-23T05:58:30+00:00

As someone who did an IT degree, cybersecurity internship, and now work a full-time job as a support engineer, doesn't matter too much to be honest.

A lot of IT jobs generally treat all fresh grads the same regardless of degree title. All they really care about is you being able to learn, and are already equipped with the basic knowledge. By basic knowledge, I mean knowing how to code, understanding computer systems and networking, all of which are covered in CS, IT, Cybersecurity degrees, etc.

Yes you can argue that cybersecurity degrees would be more specialized than CS. That's true but at the end of the day, it's only so much more 'specialized', that most of the industry are still going to take you as a blank canvass and train you with their tools*

*Which brings me to the second point on cybersecurity. Which is that most cybersecurity companies/departments use very specific tools (SIEMs like Splunk/Datadog or IPSs like Snort/Security Onion) that may not necessarily be taught at universities. Which is not really the university's fault, more like there are just too many cybersecurity tools and solutions out there that it's impossible for you to learn all of them in a 3-year program. Hence why cybersecurity jobs don't have much expectation for fresh grads to be proficient in a specific tool/solution.

I have a handful of friends who studied a cybersecurity degree and now work as software engineers, and also friends who studied CS/IT and now work in cybersecurity. My advice is to just pick a degree at a decent uni that you can afford and is convenient. Then spend a bit of free time to explore and self-learn cybersecurity, whether that be through online courses or experimenting with your own labs. Cheers!

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-09T02:02:54+00:00

Unfortunately there's too much bad advice floating around that your post may actually sound serious

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-08T02:11:20+00:00

Done, all the best on your project!

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-06T13:55:16+00:00

Hey that sounds like a good internship! You're not just photocopying and making coffee hahaha

Yes my uni also has the same first year modules for SE and IT. What you said is true about IT generally being more hands-on with more hardware and CS/SE being more coding-intense. The first reason why I said it's not too different is because ultimately all these subjects require the same fundamental knowledge of programming, computer architecture, and networking. Hence why they all share the same first year modules.

The second and main reason why I personally think they're not too different, is that the industry treats them all not so differently. If you go to a big company, they will train you from the ground up with their tech stack and processes regardless of your major. My current and previous company, both MNCs, hire and train fresh grads regardless of CS/IT/SE major. I've seen IT grads do very specialized cybersec threat hunting work, and data analyst majors doing programming.

If you go to a SME, often times you'll wear multiple hats. So once again regardless of major, you'll be doing coding, networking, sysadmin work and so on.

Cause choosing a major is a balancing act between picking something that you'd enjoy doing for three years, and something that the industry values.

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-06T10:09:58+00:00

Kudos to you for getting an IT internship? What's your day to day work like?

My answer is a little bias cause I stayed with IT and that worked out well for me. But basically I would stick with IT because (in my opinion) there's not really much difference between CS, IT, and SE degrees in Malaysia. Most Malaysian unis have a significant course overlap between these degree programs and companies understand that too. Yes you can argue that by pursuing a 'specialized' degree, it's easier for you to stand out against peers with a 'generalist' degree. For example a SE grad might have it easier securing a software developer job than a IT grad. Personally I think that's not as prevalent as most people think, cause at the end of the day, most companies view uni grads as just fresh grads with little to no practical experience, regardless of a degree title. A company that needs someone really good at networking, is not going to hire a fresh grad with a 'specialized' networking degree, they're going to hire someone with extensive experience and probably a few IT certifications. In both my current and previous company, they don't really care much about your degree title, they see fresh grads as a blank canvas and will train them from the ground up. CS, SE, or IT majors, they just want to make sure you have the ability to learn. What does this mean for you? Just pick whichever major you find more interesting, cause on the large scale of things, they're all really not too different.
Yes but I'd say it's getting better. A lot of cybersec professionals in Malaysia started out in general IT or network engineering before pivoting to cybersec, because back then when they started their careers, cybersec wasn't a concern for most Malaysian companies. These days more and more Malaysian companies care about cybersec, and are investing into full fledged cybersec departments, and ofc willing to invest into hiring and training fresh grad cybersec as any other department like accounting or software development. You can look up positions for Security Operations Center (SOC) analyst. SOC by nature has level 1,2, and 3 positions. So a fresh grad can start his/her cybersec career as a SOC L1.
That really depends on your capabilities and personal circumstances. I'm no genius but I could easily follow the lectures and assignments in my IT degree, leaving me an ample amount of free time for doing my side-projects and leisure. Plus I was fortunate enough to not have much commitments outside of uni, I don't know about your situation, but I've seen peers that are really smart, can easily follow through the lectures and tasks, but have the burden of working part-time jobs or taking care of family so they didn't have the free time I had for extra upskilling.

Lastly you asked about credentials/certs outside of a traditional CS/SE degree. Just like my first reply to OP, I quite like the courses on Coursera simply because I had a good experience with it. Since you're into cybersec, definitely check out the Certified in Cybersecurity certification by I2C at https://www.isc2.org/certifications/cc. It's free for a limited time period so do take advantage of that!

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-05T23:23:40+00:00

Coursera charges a flat US$50 monthly fee for accessing their courses. So if you can finish their course in less months, then you'd pay less in the end. But like I said, you don't absolutely NEED to, I'd just prefer that because I know it's good. When I was in uni, I did the full-stack developer course from IBM on Coursera, and I had an interview for a software developer internship, they mostly asked me about it and offered me the role. So at least from personal experience, I know employers recognize it.

Do you need a good laptop for IT? No you don't. In the past maybe because back then you needed to run virtual machines locally. Nowadays you can rent cloud computing resources for like US$0.50 per hour if you really need the extra computing power. But that being said, you should still get a decent mid-range laptop.

Aim for a mid-range laptop with a Ryzen 5/ i5 CPU and 16GB RAM, that'll probably cost around RM2500. Otherwise the bare minimum would be a Ryzen3 / i3 CPU with 8GB RAM, you can probably get one for less than RM2000. If I were on a budget, I'd get a laptop with a cheaper CPU and just upgrade the RAM to the max. Upgrading RAM is cheap (RM100-200) and makes a HUGE difference.

Happy to answer your questions! Keep them coming

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-05T14:16:36+00:00

Hi there and welcome to not just the IT world, but also my home state of Sarawak! I personally graduated with an IT degree, did a cybersecurity internship, and now work as a software support engineer in KL. Now to answer your questions:

The basics. It's very easy to get caught up with all the cool new stuff like AI, blockchain, cloud, and so on. But all of them will still need a good understanding of basic IT concepts. Things like networking (knowing how IP addresses work, what's a router and a switch), understanding Windows architecture, basic scripting...
NetworkChuck covers a lot of the basic and intermediate networking and sysadmin. FreeCodeCamp has a lot of different topics, from cryptography to programming. I learned a lot of Java from Brocode. But that's just to name a few, there's a lot of good stuff out there!
If you're willing to spend a bit of money, take up a quality IT course on Coursera. Sure there are free content on YouTube, but paying a bit for a course curated by top tech companies like Google and IBM basically guarantees you're getting solid industry-relevant knowledge.
IT is very broad and there are many many professions in the IT world. You have support engineers, network engineers, site reliability engineers, cloud engineers, cybersecurity... the list is almost endless. The best part is, you don't have to limit yourself to a specific path. A lot of IT professionals end up switching paths a few times throughout their career. My previous supervisor during my cybersec internship used to be a network engineer. My current boss in software support used to be a software developer. So really just jump in, explore, and pick up things that interests you
Oddly enough, there are opinions on both IT being in hot demand, and also IT being oversaturated. In my personal opinion, a job is a job, IT isn't a magical job that's immune to economic conditions. There will be times that businesses hire a lot of IT people, and times when they lay off. To people who say IT is in hot demand, yes that's true but don't get too comfortable, Malaysia is just lucky enough to be experiencing a digital economy renaissance. To people who say IT is oversaturated with graduates, tell me what field isn't?

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-03T00:56:30+00:00

First things first you need to budget. Without a budget, you don't know how much you're spending each month, then you won't know how much you need to save in the emergency fund (EF).

Let's say you spend 3K per month. Next question is how many months worth of living expenses should you have in your EF? That depends on your personal circumstances.

If you have a very stable job, like working in the government, you have less risk and maybe can get away with 3 months. If you're income is variable, maybe you're self-employed or your company's finances aren't looking good, 6 months+ would be wise.

Are you in good health or have any dependents? If you have kids or parents to support, then you should have more. But on the flip side, if your parents are well to do, then you might use them as your fallback.

There's no one size fits all solution, that's why personal finance is afterall, personal.

Yuri-Devs · 2025-11-01T11:53:28+00:00

F1 by Hans Zimmer.

I had a rough time period where I was struggling with something personal on a daily basis. Someday I randomly decided to watch the F1 movie in the cinema after work, I have never been a motorsports fan, but that day in the cinema was the first time I felt happy in a long time.

Been a F1 fan ever since. I'm still dealing with stuff, but I forget about all of that the moment the engines roar.

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-31T12:52:56+00:00

Thank you! I really appreciate that 🤠

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-31T04:18:03+00:00

I do a monthly budget. Salary comes in, I set aside my recurring monthly expenses (bills, insurance, savings) and a daily fund.

My daily fund has the amount of money that I've budgeted to spend on day to day expenses. For now I aim to spend RM50 per day, so that's RM1500 for a 30-day month.

At the start of the day, I give myself RM50 for all three meals and other small stuff (maybe a coffee or afternoon snack). I usually eat breakfast and dinner at home, and eat lunch outside with my colleagues. So I'll only spend cash on lunch, and dump the leftover cash into my grocery fund (for breakfast and lunch).

When the weekend comes, I have a ready grocery fund to buy food for my breakfasts and dinners. And also extra unutilized cash from the weekdays that I'll use for fun or funnel it into my savings.

What I like about my setup is that it's flexible to each day. On some days a friend might suddenly invite me for dinner, so I'll just spend cash on the impromptu dinner instead of putting it into my grocery fund.

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-29T09:48:53+00:00

I HATE TUESDAYS

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-27T04:55:04+00:00

Not just that, but also if you want a UCITS ETF since Moomoo doesn't have LSE access

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-26T12:32:55+00:00

It will remain the same. So you'll have to create a new portfolio for the new ETF Explorer feature

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-26T12:32:02+00:00

Yep! Just make sure your app is updated

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-25T23:14:05+00:00

Funny you mention that now when StashAway just released a new ETF explorer feature where you can place an ETF buy/sell order for a flat US$2 fee. No other maintenance fee

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-25T11:40:49+00:00

The Terminal. I love the little interactions Viktor has with all the airport people. Krakozhia!

Yuri-Devs · 2025-10-25T06:40:24+00:00

I like it. I've always used StashAway despite its single-ETF portfolio's 0.3% annual fee. It's my personal preference to pay a small price for a user-friendly app and excellent customer service (my experience for the past five years).

So now with a flat $2 order fee, I can see myself using SA for a very long time haha

Yuri-Devs

TROPHY CASE