I’ve had some time now since I’ve been Security+ certified, and I’ve been trying to think about the next steps that I am going to take.  Largely, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on what it is that I want to do specifically with IT in the future.  I know that I want to do something relating to security within IT.  A dream job would be part of a company or owning my own that was involved in penetration testing and IT/Network/Business security auditing.

Knowing this, I’ve been trying to plan what certifications might help provide a good demonstration of my background knowledge that would be applicable to the job.  First things first, I am going to get my Network+ before the end of the year.  After taking the Security+, the Network+ does seem to be very similar.  I’ve taken a practice test and it seems the only area that I am specifically need to work on is knowing the protocols for routing.  Once I get this information down, I don’t think there should be a reason that I can’t pass it fairly quickly.

Once I have this, I am going to start studying for the CEH certification (Certified Ethical Hacker).  I’ve come from a background in security, as it has always been something that I have been interested in.  I’ve briefly looked over the certification and it seems that it is a lot of things that I already have had some exposure to.  I do not think that this would be a significant challenge to learn.

Finally, once I have received all the previous certifications, my big certification that I want to go after is the CISSP.  This is the big security certification that you can get.  Having this would provide major credibility to myself, and it is something that I really want to get.  I think I will look into taking a class, along with some book studying as well.  This is very in depth about all formats of security, and would definitely require a good amount of knowledge.  However, since it is something I am very interested in, I have no doubt that I will be able to become CISSP certified.