Before starting a new semester, let’s look up to the first semester of MSc. Cybersecurity from my perspective. I want to share specifically my perspective because I am getting a lot of questions related to programming. In these questions, the main concern is about a lack of programming knowledge and they want to know about they can survive in this curriculum or not.
For those who don’t know me, I graduated from Software Engineering back in Turkey and currently working as an iOS Engineer. Also, MSc. Cybersecurity 2nd-year student. I can say that I am programming on a daily basis and I hope with this post I can answer the most frequently asked question:
“Can I survive without programming in cybersecurity?”
There is a short and a long answer. If I need to start with the short answer, that’s easy: YES!
But for the long answer, please stick with me.
I want to start this long version with this: Programming is a skill can be learned easily. Yes, really. Because there are tons of resources for anyone who wants to learn programming. There are a lot of websites that are full of content and even sometimes 100% free.
Yes, you can survive in the cybersecurity field without programming. But, you shouldn’t. If you ask “Why!?”, let me put down some things for you:
1. Reading source code is important
In most of the cases, you need to find a needle in the haystack and sometimes you need to find that needle in the source code. Because you are dealing with software vulnerabilities mainly and learning programming will increase your code reading ability and also give you more aspects to search for.
2. Automating small things will save tons of time
Programming is a life-long skill. You can use it nearly everywhere. Of course, there are already tons of tools for us to use and save tons of time while testing. But if you think out of the box, you will see more possibilities where you can make small automating scripts and gain the advantage of programming. For example, you can write your own script to select the courses at the beginning of the semester. Sounds cool, right!
3. If there is no tool for that job, why not to make your own
Thanks to other engineers and developers all around the world, there are a lot of tools for us to use and test on your system according to our use cases. But let’s assume that we are dealing with a very weird edge case that no tool is working properly. So with the help of the programming that you learned and improved during the years, why not to develop a tool or even an exploit for that case. Then, other people all around the world can use to tool or exploit that you developed which is amazing!
To sum up, you can survive without programming but you shouldn’t think about this case in my opinion. Programming can be learned and will be a life-long skill for you. More than it will help you on cybersecurity, it may open new ways or introduce your newer horizons.
Closing notes
I hope you liked what you read and I am really looking forward to seeing you in the next one! If you don’t want to miss any content, you can subscribe to the website and I will let you know whenever something new going on here!
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Until next one,
Furkan
