05-24-2025 // 2:30pm

28.04.2024 // starting my morning off in this gorgeous coffee shop (where I feel like I’ve already become a regular)

The paradox of being a student: a full notebook, an empty head.

vintage stamps

~Friday June 28th 2024~

Studying at home tonight and finally!! Finished Network+ study videos. Tomorrow is PBQ and labs day and hopefully Sunday is test day. I haven’t posted many pictures using my PC setup so I figured I’d do that since it looks halfway decent today.

Productive for: 3 hrs

| 12 may 2025 |

I've taken a little break after finals to chill. I'm going to my aunt's later this week, she lives near the beach!!

also I'm moving apartments at the end of this month which is exciting but also stressful since I can no longer nag my brothers to help me move (they have full time jobs in different states now 😔💔). I don't have classes this summer, just research but I may try to prepare myself for quantum II and numerical analysis,,, also yes this is in fact another picture from my trip to the chicago botanical garden 😃 (I have too many haha)

February 27, 2025 • Thursday

--- 30 days of productivity • COLLAB CHALLENGE WITH @studaxy • Day 20/30 ---

💛 Axy's study time: 0h

💙 Iris's study time: 4h

[Axy's sleep time was like 17h lol but in their defense they were sick and terribly sleep deprived]

Made some IT notes. I'm not drastically lagging behind on that subject anymore :)

🎧 On the Run — Glass Animals

toastedbyeli

~Update~

Last night, I had another crashout and realized I'm not at all prepared to test for my discrete math course. my foundation in math is not up to college level and it really shows. i'm going to divert and work on other courses and do tutoring for the rest of the term until i'm ready to take the final for discrete math again (and actually pass).

the relief i felt getting off the call with my advisor was insane. i'm starting on a critical thinking and reason course today so stay tuned for more complaining about that. i feel like a whole human again this is great.

An Introduction to Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is all about securing technology and processes - making sure that the software, hardware, and networks that run the world do exactly what they need to do and can't be abused by bad actors.

The CIA triad is a concept used to explain the three goals of cybersecurity. The pieces are:

Confidentiality: ensuring that information is kept secret, so it can only be viewed by the people who are allowed to do so. This involves encrypting data, requiring authentication before viewing data, and more.

Integrity: ensuring that information is trustworthy and cannot be tampered with. For example, this involves making sure that no one changes the contents of the file you're trying to download or intercepts your text messages.

Availability: ensuring that the services you need are there when you need them. Blocking every single person from accessing a piece of valuable information would be secure, but completely unusable, so we have to think about availability. This can also mean blocking DDoS attacks or fixing flaws in software that cause crashes or service issues.

What are some specializations within cybersecurity? What do cybersecurity professionals do?

incident response

digital forensics (often combined with incident response in the acronym DFIR)

reverse engineering

cryptography

governance/compliance/risk management

penetration testing/ethical hacking

vulnerability research/bug bounty

threat intelligence

cloud security

industrial/IoT security, often called Operational Technology (OT)

security engineering/writing code for cybersecurity tools (this is what I do!)

and more!

Where do cybersecurity professionals work?

I view the industry in three big chunks: vendors, everyday companies (for lack of a better term), and government. It's more complicated than that, but it helps.

Vendors make and sell security tools or services to other companies. Some examples are Crowdstrike, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto, EY, etc. Vendors can be giant multinational corporations or small startups. Security tools can include software and hardware, while services can include consulting, technical support, or incident response or digital forensics services. Some companies are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), which means that they serve as the security team for many other (often small) businesses.

Everyday companies include everyone from giant companies like Coca-Cola to the mom and pop shop down the street. Every company is a tech company now, and someone has to be in charge of securing things. Some businesses will have their own internal security teams that respond to incidents. Many companies buy tools provided by vendors like the ones above, and someone has to manage them. Small companies with small tech departments might dump all cybersecurity responsibilities on the IT team (or outsource things to a MSSP), or larger ones may have a dedicated security staff.

Government cybersecurity work can involve a lot of things, from securing the local water supply to working for the big three letter agencies. In the U.S. at least, there are also a lot of government contractors, who are their own individual companies but the vast majority of what they do is for the government. MITRE is one example, and the federal research labs and some university-affiliated labs are an extension of this. Government work and military contractor work are where geopolitics and ethics come into play most clearly, so just… be mindful.

What do academics in cybersecurity research?

A wide variety of things! You can get a good idea by browsing the papers from the ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference. Some of the big research areas that I'm aware of are:

cryptography & post-quantum cryptography

machine learning model security & alignment

formal proofs of a program & programming language security

security & privacy

security of network protocols

vulnerability research & developing new attack vectors

Cybersecurity seems niche at first, but it actually covers a huge range of topics all across technology and policy. It's vital to running the world today, and I'm obviously biased but I think it's a fascinating topic to learn about. I'll be posting a new cybersecurity masterpost each day this week as a part of the #StudyblrMasterpostJam, so keep an eye out for tomorrow's post! In the meantime, check out the tag and see what other folks are posting about :D

*Somewhat* productive day

Spanning tree protocol and IEEE standards all day long :) I passed my last class (not web dev, that one is in break jail). Working on the Network+ certification now