Slow Down!

Dammit your making us look bad.

The Month of May has been a fun one for me. I got a year older while in lock down (Meh). I started playing Borderlands again as I lost my old save game and need to work back up (hindsight: should have got the ultimate edition and an XBox One again as all the DLC is free and good). In addition to this I did some garden work and had the biggest fire I’ve had to date, Oh and I picked up 3 different Cyber qualifications.

That’s right 3 different certs, 3 Different-ish fields of Study.

The month Started with the Basis Technology Autopsy 8 hours free training (due to COVID19) which was an awesome course and for me a completely different change of pace. I never really gave much thought to Digital Forensics, in the past I would just smash up old hard drives or turn them into shiny coasters but not everyone does that. Some folks just format the dive and sell it to their local PC part or Exchange shop and that’s fine… note some people don’t bother formatting and just send it in (BIG MISTAKE!!! FORMAT YOUR SHIT!). but what about when you are tasked with checking over a drive for recovery, not specifically law enforcement or dodgy newspaper stuff.

This course not only allowed me to use the software but get a feel for where things like this may come in handy, lets say recovering your smashed phone or laptop that dropped 20 feet.

There is obviously the law enforcement side of things, making copies, finding specific things to add to your case file etc etc but I thoroughly enjoyed this new perspective and just what you may have to go through to get information about a dognapping (its ok its the course, the dog is fine, spoiler alert).

Around the mid point of the month as per my last update, Daniel Card appeared on my LinkedIn sharing his completion of the ICSI

Computer Network Security Specialist course which (in my head) is a ‘legit’ course as you have to fork out a good chunk of change (£500) to get access to this more ‘elitist’ learning and professional certification.

Now, I’m a poor as dirt guy, I literally cannot afford more expensive training or certification… I just can’t (that’s not to do with not having a job though that is a major contributing factor), as such when this rolled around and Daniel pointed out that its currently free till the end of May (yay for COVID19, wait did I just say that?).. I did what anyone would do and threw my details into that site so fast it made my fingers bleed.

Finally. I can get a ‘big boy’ certification, something that people recognise so I can finally back up my skills and show people I have at least some idea of what I’m talking about.

So, over a period of a few mornings (I always get up early) I managed to go through this course which was all text based (with some videos but the text afterwards was the transcript anyway) and multiple choice answer my way to a perfect score and a recognised certification.

SIDE NOTE – for me, increasing the video playback speed to 1.5x seems to more ‘focus’ my attention so I don’t get distracted and actually learn.

None the less I was happy, damn it I was over the moon, I had achieved something and would get recognised for it. Certified that I know my shit!

But what next?

It was May 20th and with this new fire of learning lit under me I had to move on, I had to learn something new. Enter StackSkills.

Now this is a bit of a throwback for me, you see years ago and I mean years and years ago when I was first finding my place online and what I wanted to do I found things like humblebundle. I grabbed a few different Cyber Security book collections and what not from this and would slowly read them over the years but I forgot I also had a StackSkills account which got filled up with a load of ‘free’ courses (they would have cost money but offers and whatnot) so I opened it back up and found I have several courses I can complete and once more bolster my CV.

Accordingly I opened up ‘ol trusty, the Ultimate Wi-Fi Hacking and Security Series, I was fresh off networking with ICSI so wanted to keep it going.

4 mornings later and I have another beautiful certification to add to my collection.

Think General Grievous but instead of dead Jedi Lightsabers its Cyber Certifications:

That’s what I want to do. I want to learn now (same as home exercise and workouts). I want to do these things, and bizarrely I am in a situation where I can actually do these things.

So, what is next?

More Certification/Course Study, I’m going to find something and I am going to learn the crap out of it, and that’s a guarantee.