This is the weekly thread for career and education questions and advice. There are no stupid questions; so, what do you want to know about certs/degrees, job requirements, and any other general cybersecurity career questions? Ask away!

Interested in what other people are asking, or think your question has been asked before? Have a look through prior weeks of content - though we're working on making this more easily searchable for the future.

Do you guys think AppSec is gonna be more important because of lots of Vibe coded code, or is AI gonna be that good so AppSec is not relevant anymore?

Hello,
I am preparing for an interview next week for a Junior Cyber Advisor role. I have a software engineering background, so I'm feeling a little unconfident.

The job listing says I should have an understanding of the following:

Networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, firewalls)

Operating systems (Windows, Linux fundamentals)

Cybersecurity principles (CIA triad, access control, basic threat concepts)

I've studied networking concepts, including TCP/IP, IP addressing, ports, DNS, and firewalls.

My question is regarding Windows and Linux. What specific operating system fundamentals should I be prepared to understand or demonstrate during the interview?

Also, for the cybersecurity principles, how would you guys recommend I go about learning them? Are there any specific websites, tools, or hands-on labs that helped you understand the concepts better? I don't just want to memorize definitions; I actually want to understand how these things work.

Any tips and suggestions would be very helpful. Thank you.

I have an ecommerce site with two backends - primary (Oracle) and secondary (AWS). I created all this with vibe coding. Before taking it to production, I wanted to ensure there are no security vulnerabilities. Is there a Wiz alternative for smaller projects?

Looking for advice on the best all in one cyber security platform. Credit freeze, tracking, identity theft insurance etc. anyone have any suggestions?

I have Norton right now, but don’t love it. Not user friendly, always trying to get me to upgrade to something etc.

I really am looking for the best protection with some that’s easy to use. TYIA!!

I’m looking to give my ai more permissions to play around with reading online documents and doing some investing through Robinhood’s mcp connection. What do people use to protect against prompt injection or potential mishaps while it is running?

TLDR: Scared of AI going off prompt, looking for solutions

something ive been chewing on from the audit side. most orgs i talk to have a policy that says human review happens for AI assisted decisions. fine. but if an auditor picked one specific decision from three months ago and said show me the review, who did it, what did they see.. could most places actually produce that? suspect the honest answer is no more often than anyone admits

the reviewer part bothers me more tbh. say the review does happen. does that person have time to think, anything to check the output against besides the tools own summary, and can they push back without it becoming their problem? bc "human in the loop" where the human approves 200 things a day is a loop in name only

also curious whether anyone re-tests vendor claims after the vendor swaps the model underneath. bc they do swap them. and the approval was for the old behaviour..

for the audit and GRC folks here, is this what your getting asked now? and can anyone your auditing actually answer it?

How does AI use relate to cybersecurity professionals’ confidence in performing technical tasks without AI assistance?

I’m conducting an academic research study and would appreciate your perspective. If you currently work in a technical cybersecurity role, or have within the past 12 months, you’re invited to participate.

The anonymous survey takes approximately 5 minutes. Responses will be used solely for academic research. All perspectives are welcome, whether you use AI frequently, occasionally, or never.

Take the survey:

https://qualtricsxm7xk6yg37r.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_41qxah89b9hSKLc

Thank you for participating. Please consider sharing this with others in the cybersecurity community.

#Cybersecurity #ArtificialIntelligence #Research

My phantom wallet got drained . It was just pennies but now i am paranoid whether they have access of my whole device, personal data . How do i make sure?

Hi everyone, I'm new here :)

I'm wondering if anyone can help me to run this .jason file that turns attacker ip addresses/locations into a map in windows defender workbook?

I'm currently following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5JL2RIbThM and am onto the final stage.

This is the .json script I'm trying to run:

{ "type": 3, "content": { "version": "KqlItem/1.0", "query": "let GeoIPDB_FULL = _GetWatchlist(\"geoip\");\nlet WindowsEvents = SecurityEvent;\nWindowsEvents | where EventID == 4625\n| order by TimeGenerated desc\n| evaluate ipv4_lookup(GeoIPDB_FULL, IpAddress, network)\n| summarize FailureCount = count() by IpAddress, latitude, longitude, cityname, countryname\n| project FailureCount, AttackerIp = IpAddress, latitude, longitude, city = cityname, country = countryname,\nfriendly_location = strcat(cityname, \" (\", countryname, \")\");", "size": 3, "timeContext": { "durationMs": 2592000000 }, "queryType": 0, "resourceType": "microsoft.operationalinsights/workspaces", "visualization": "map", "mapSettings": { "locInfo": "LatLong", "locInfoColumn": "countryname", "latitude": "latitude", "longitude": "longitude", "sizeSettings": "FailureCount", "sizeAggregation": "Sum", "opacity": 0.8, "labelSettings": "friendly_location", "legendMetric": "FailureCount", "legendAggregation": "Sum", "itemColorSettings": { "nodeColorField": "FailureCount", "colorAggregation": "Sum", "type": "heatmap", "heatmapPalette": "greenRed" } } }, "name": "query - 0" } 

This is the error message I get when trying to execute the query in the advanced editor:

"No tabular expression statement found"

I have a feeling its not working because Azure workbook has now changed to Microsoft Defender?

Any suggestions/advice/fixes would be much appreciated as I'd really like to get this project finished!

Thank you in advance for your help :)

So if anyone wants to teach me the things that i need answer to the most about privacy DM me please i really gonna appreciate it. Thanks.

i a an cyber security expert and i am looking for a job

I’m so unbelievably stunned that this just happened. Around 5:15AM I went to put my pc back to sleep because I assumed my cat stepped on my keyboard and woke it up. I was fidgeting with my mouse because it wouldn’t work and then realized that someone was controlling my desktop. The only thing I actually witnessed them do was go into my google profile/settings and copy my phone number, then I think they noticed I was trying to click and spam my keyboard so they left. I went to my search history and they were in my bank account and also in my email. I called the bank and immediately froze my entire account. They saw my savings, my credit card, and were in my profile. I have 2 factor and did receive a code right before I woke up. I don’t think it’s possible for them to actually know my password since it just auto-filled, but they 100% have my phone number. Besides the obvious things, changing passwords, freezing my bank, what else do I need to do??? I’m so overwhelmed and shocked that I just witnessed this. Are there other steps I need to take here? I’ve been trying my best investigative work here but all I have is some search history and I was able to disable a device in my pc that allows Wake-on-LAN, so they shouldn’t be able to wake it up from sleep again. What damage can they do with my phone number? I watched him copy it. Please let me know if there are some obvious countermeasures I should be taking here. I’m so stunned I don’t even know where to start.

Edit: thank you so much everyone for your feedback. There are too many comments to respond to while I’m busy securing all my passwords and reinstalling windows. I have read many of your guys’ instructions and am taking action of many of them. Thanks again!

Edit #2: I think I found the malware. I’ve looked in a number of spots on my PC but the only thing I’ve found is a Google Chrome extension I had in the past. It was an ad blocker for streams. It was tagged “This extension contains malware”. I guess Google flagged it as malicious and took it off their store. I downloaded this like 2 years ago though so idk why this is happening now?? Anyways, PC will be wiped and I think I’ll be okay. Thanks again everyone!

Has anyone heard anything about ARTEX being abused to grab leaked GitHub secrets?

Info here from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/11/05/threat-actors-use-agentic-ai-tooling-to-find-and-abuse-exposed-secrets/

And GitGuardian: https://blog.gitguardian.com/the-agents-have-now-found-your-secrets-on-github-artex-is-abusing-public-secrets-right-now/

I’m trying to get into the cybersecurity industry, and I’ve met a few people through networking who work multiple jobs in the field, which has always made me curious about how they manage their time and what their day to day lives actually look like.

For those of you working two, three, or even more cybersecurity jobs, how many hours are you actually putting into each job, and how demanding is the workload? Are you constantly busy throughout the day, or do you have enough downtime between tasks to make working multiple jobs manageable? I’m also curious how you handle situations where meetings, deadlines, or other responsibilities overlap, and whether managing multiple positions is as stressful as it sounds or if it really depends on the roles you’re working.

I’m especially curious about your work-life balance because I can’t imagine juggling that many responsibilities without sacrificing a good amount of personal time. Do you still have time to spend with friends and family, go to the gym, enjoy your hobbies, or even just have a day to yourself without worrying about work? I’d really like to hear what a typical day looks like for those of you doing this and how you manage to have a life outside of work.