Why Cyber Security, thecyberlearner?

Mostly our interests for Cyber Security are spiked by movies and shows with amazing hacking scenes. If you guessed same for me, kudos! Who doesn’t want to hack a bank(as a stupid teenager of course)? Or be able to change their GPA on the school website? Of course I did. In high school, this is what I thought Computer Science was all about and that’s why I had made my mind when applying for college.

This was just until campus. On my freshman year, I joined tech groups like Google Developer Students and Microsoft group. Of course over the past years, just like most campuses, here Cyber Security was not so much embraced. I could not find a mentor for my interests and of course as a confused freshman, easily waved away, boom! Web development! I started learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript then utilizing PHP for back-end. When I joined ALX Africa, one of the best software engineering programs for transforming Africa I not only became more tech literate but also developed more as an aspiring leader. Wonder why I’m so good in python and API development with flask? Haha. My skills grew rapidly until third year.

They said interests change? I witnessed the cyber security community in Kenya actively flourish and if you are wondering what effects that had to me, my Cyber Security interests arose again. I followed closely and joined communities like HackTheBox, as well as TCM-Security discord channels. After thorough research, I was actually astonished how many different career paths I could take in Cyber Security(I’m resisting the urge to talk about such but this is supposed to be just a simple story. Maybe next time :| ). I was ready to go for what I love.

So I was back on Cyber Security(ethically this time). I always had a thing for penetration testing. The idea of penetrating and defending things against skilled “my younger selves” is always fascinating to me. With the increased cyber crimes and data breaches, I felt like this was the right place for me. The chance for me to be a hero. With every thing I used or developed, I saw the need for Cyber Security. With extensive reading of articles, learning on YouTube and listening to podcasts, I realized my projects like applications, websites and APIs could easily get exploited. This challenged me to push harder.

Attending Interversity bootcamp at KCA University was a great milestone for me. I finally met people I had been looking up to like Dr. Bright Gameli, Jimm Wayans, most of the Silensec security specialists and innovators of communities like BsidesNairobi and sheHacks. Inspired, engaged and empowered is an understatement. Since then I vowed to attend as much events as possible to learn more.

With only 3 months into Cyber Security, through courses like PEH by TCM, TryHackMe and HackTheBox as well as participating in numerous CTFs, I have witnessed so much personal growth and gained a lot of skills in Network and Web penetration testing. As I push myself further into Mobile pentesting, I can confidently say I am loving what I’m doing and winning against the me I was yesterday, which I consider growth.