| | Bradley | This program was introduced to me at a crucial period in life where I'd recently lost my job and worried immensely about my future and that of my family. Having shunned the technical aspects of computers and their operation for most of my life and having the inherent intimidation, it was the stories of success that were enjoyed by new friends that had me change my game and dive in. At numerous times throughout the program when I was in over my head, the faculty went way above my expectations with encouragement, guidance and opportunities for extra technical help and lab time.
Of the Pros I discovered - some highlights(and there many) were having instructors with decades of industry experience, as well as having some of them literally coming straight from high-stake incident responses and able to relay crucial perspectives aligning with the lessons at hand. The curriculum is not entirely technical as there are also classes on Strategy and Threat Analysis which brought critical thinking to eye-opening topics, and there were daily discussions of the most recent breaches which helped highlight the need for industry professionals. Understanding that this is a fundamental learning program, all the instructors regularly pointed out additional resources for deep-diving into topics as well as giving their input into the reputability of the different books, classes and optional certifications. The last Pro I'll mention here is the Career Services part, where not only incredible employers came in weekly for talks and interview classes, but extra credit was given for attending career fairs, conferences and local Cyber-Industry meetups and workshops.
The only Con that I would state was that sometimes labs wouldn't work exactly as written or the Virtual-environment for the labs would not allow for all the students to "get on" it at the same time. Though frustrating for students and instructors alike there were always alternatives to do the labs more from scratch on personal virtual machines, that ultimately forced extra learning opportunities to remediate the same issues - which I believe may help the less technical students like myself when it comes to applying the knowledge in an actual workplace. I also realize that the curriculum is dynamic in that it is still evolving and will continue to do so in response to the needs of the industry, and that the school seems willing to keep upgrading the infrastructure and labs to meet those demands.
I feel the bottom line in undertaking a program at SecureSet is that if one puts in the hard work, and is open to being active with Career Services - that this is a great way to get a broad-based and fundamental understanding of enough topics to get into the Cybersecurity industry, and make some high-quality friendships in a Cohort environment. |
