Hi everyone. This is the story of how I found my new goals after I came back (miserably :D) from my master’s program. If you haven’t read the previous story, you can read it below.
To be honest, the story is not that new. I already knew and study about cyber security from my bachelor degree, especially from semester 2 until semester 5. I only took the mandatory course, not the optional one, because at that time i was not really into it. However, at some point, I feel so satisfied when i complete the lab, finish the courses, find a bug from a system, or when I did my first Capture the Flag (CTF) competition back then. It feels like something woke up inside me (wait what?).
Additionally, when I studied cyber security on a well-known platform called TryHackMe (THM), it gradually increased my interest in cyber security (and probably still does until now). On that platform, you can learn many basic concepts of cyber security: how communication works between two devices, what the TCP/IP model is, the difference between blue teaming and red teaming, and other things that help build a strong foundation in cyber security.
On the other hand, there is another platform called Hack The Box (HTB), which is the real struggle of learning (lol). The learning curve becomes much steeper because the materials and concepts are more advanced. You are given a black-box machine, and you need to find vulnerabilities by yourself with very limited information in order to capture the flag. It is very interesting because you need to understand the whole system and collect limited clues to achieve the final goal.
We then jump to the time when I quit from NUS. During my master’s studies, I enrolled in an interesting course called Trustworthy Machine Learning. I learned about robustness, fairness, and privacy in machine learning, which is still related to cybersecurity in some ways. This course opened my eyes to the possibility that I could focus more on cyber security while still maintaining my interest in Machine Learning. Therefore, I decided to take a deeper dive into cyber security to pursue my new goal: becoming a Cyber Security Specialist, with AI Security as one of the areas I am interested in exploring further.
This spirit brought me to the next chapter of my journey: applying for a job that could truly support my dream. I eventually found that PT Bank Syariah Indonesia Tbk opened applications for its Management Trainee (MT) IT program. I will tell you more about that in the next article.
Thanks for reading. Cheers.