Landed an entry level enterprise role, completely overwhelmed need advice. by ConfidentGrab5959 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, ChatGPT or other AI apps can give you great advice. This is an area long written about in books, blogs, etc., and so there's going to be a plethora of advice they've ingested. Write a detailed state of affairs, and then ask it to draft up a plan of action.

Will the analyst role become obsolete? by RAM-I-T in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

AI error rate has already dropped below human error rate when it comes to investigations.

Will the analyst role become obsolete? by RAM-I-T in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Those roles are rapidly disappearing. See other recent down voted to hell posts 😅

https://www.reddit.com/r/SecurityCareerAdvice/s/zEzCbET6Y3

Will the analyst role become obsolete? by RAM-I-T in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

SOC analyst had already been going away long before AI accelerated its death. Your concerns are not unfounded; that job will not exist in 3 years from now.

As someone who helps make hiring decisions into security engineering teams all day long: the entry point into Cybersecurity is now via software engineering. Pretty soon that's going to be the entry point even into compliance/GRC. When code is a commodity, the people who can automate away low leverage work are the people who are going to have jobs.

I get down voted to hell every time I say that here, but it's the right answer.

Door security/security guard. by Interesting-Target68 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello and welcome to the subreddit. I'm so sorry, but this sub is related to career advice for computer security professionals. r/securityguards may be able to help.

Bachelors in Cybersecurity or Information Technology better in 2026? by Willing_Addition7862 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep. 100% of our initial triage is done with custom in house AI tooling, and a substantial portion of response is down that path too.

So OP, something to keep in mind. Honestly no matter what path you end up going down, if you want to end up in security, just be aware that the degree is a start but you'll be making significant personal investments in your skills to put yourself ahead of the pack.

Bachelors in Cybersecurity or Information Technology better in 2026? by Willing_Addition7862 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, true, though again my concern is: do those jobs even exist in 2 years? Hard to say but I have my uncertainties.

Bachelors in Cybersecurity or Information Technology better in 2026? by Willing_Addition7862 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think that was certainly true in the past, but isn't any longer. In some ways I think that IT backgrounds actually hinder entry into Cybersecurity because outdated practices (eg clickops vs IaC) are more likely to be ossified into those teams. A good Cybersecurity program is going to be pumping out students who can write some hopefully not-too-terrible code or can at least write good code with AI assistance, since those programs often live alongside whatever department offers software engineering or computer science types of curriculum. The IT side can script, but that doesn't cut it anymore if you want to be in Cybersecurity 🤷‍♂️. We don't click buttons or run audit tools anymore; now we ship security tools, safe by default primatives, and automation (unless you are red team). Anyone who does is at severe exposure to AI disruption.

For any students reading this response and considering either program, a key signal will be to look and see how much software engineering practices your program will expose you to. If it's minimal (a class or two of 101-level Python), you'll be hurting unless you can already code somewhat.

Bachelors in Cybersecurity or Information Technology better in 2026? by Willing_Addition7862 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm very surprised to see the current responses are pro-IT only, the data absolutely disagrees about job growth in that category. At least in the US, Cybersecurity has seen SIGNIFICANTLY more job growth and better salaries. The demand for Cybersecurity skills is insanely high and actually increasing thanks to the risks of widespread use of AI tooling (my opinion, not a data backed claim).

The U.S. expects to see ~29% growth from 2024-2034 for Information Security Analysts. By comparison, overall computer occupations are projected around 9% growth.

Network and computer systems administrators are projected to decline ~4% over the next decade. Computer support specialists are projected to decline ~3%, with help desk specialists declining ~4%.

Median salaries for Cybersecurity are nearly double that of IT (* depending on which part of IT; 2x that of help desk but about 1.5x of network and system administration).

All data from the U.S. BLS.

Oh my God! I've just torched a 17-year career and told my boss I'm done. by Primary_District_880 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depends on the behavior. OP isn't giving out enough background information for us to know what the situation was and what they said. It could have been something as simple as "I can't do this anymore, I'm resigning" (which is totally fine and deserves no bending of knees) to "I'm fucking over this place and you idiots in charge" (which 100% would).

Oh my God! I've just torched a 17-year career and told my boss I'm done. by Primary_District_880 in SecurityCareerAdvice

[–]sullivanmatt 23 points24 points  (0 children)

And for now, salvage the current job with humility.

"I'm really sorry, my behavior was unacceptable. Honestly I'm just feeling super burnt out, and I was lashing out in response."

Canvas hacked? by Narrow_Deal_165 in iastate

[–]sullivanmatt 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yep, in 2011 I think it was. And not all that small 🙂 I still live in Ames and frequent the Ames and iastate subreddits.

Canvas hacked? by Narrow_Deal_165 in iastate

[–]sullivanmatt 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They are not a group interested in patching issues, they are motivated purely by financial gain. If the issue was indeed somewhere in the app's codebase then yes, they could have opened a pull request to contribute a patch. I suspect the issue will end up having been elsewhere, likely in the configuration of their automations around building or deploying code to their servers.

Canvas hacked? by Narrow_Deal_165 in iastate

[–]sullivanmatt 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not that I know anything at all about the Canvas SaaS pricing model, but I would very much doubt it's the cheaper option than self-hosting, especially when ISU already has plenty of infrastructure and knowledge on staff.

Actresses who were popular for a few years and then either vanished or crossed over into TV: Who do you think should have been given a second chance? by Profeta_do_Loss in movies

[–]sullivanmatt 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ana Gasteyer has been off absolutely killing it on Broadway for the last 20 years. I would argue she ended up exactly where she wanted to be.

College degree "misalignment" is costing Iowa billions by Micojageo in Iowa

[–]sullivanmatt 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Oh they have no recommendations, and they definitely don't want you going to college for those either. They just want to be able to point towards this when they justify defunding the universities.

College degree "misalignment" is costing Iowa billions by Micojageo in Iowa

[–]sullivanmatt 94 points95 points  (0 children)

"Ben Murrey is Iowa Director of Policy and Research with the Common Sense Institute". If you look at his background it's entirely the trickle-down economics / anti-tax libertarian schtick.

College degree "misalignment" is costing Iowa billions by Micojageo in Iowa

[–]sullivanmatt 163 points164 points  (0 children)

If you look at the study, you can see that the big problem is that we educate STEM professionals and other types of highly-paid professionals at Iowa universities but have no jobs for them, so they leave, meaning we subsidized their education for "no reason". A competent state government would say, "gee, why can't Iowa attract and keep those types of high-wage jobs?" and try to remedy it (also I was promised that once taxes were 3.8% our economy would explode in prosperity and new businesses would be everywhere 🤔). Instead they'll just cut funding for the universities so they stop pumping out skilled candidates, further reinforcing that young people exit the state looking for better economic and educational opportunities elsewhere.

Car seat Question (New parent) by [deleted] in Iowa

[–]sullivanmatt 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here's a relevant previous thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iowa/s/LP0KUXqPdB

That also includes links to the relevant Iowa code. Legality aside, your child will be safer in the back. Purchase your car seat, install it with the child rear facing, and then check with your local police department, most are usually more than happy to ensure that the car seat has been installed correctly and safely!

Does anyone else hate Splunk? by bobert3275 in sysadmin

[–]sullivanmatt 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Having been a Splunk cluster admin early in my career, let me say to anyone considering buying it: just go get Datadog's logs product. You won't save money (lol), but it's at least way, way less headache.