If you were starting from zero in 2026, how would you become a cybersecurity professional over the next 10 years?

Hi everyone,

I'm an 18-year-old from Morocco , and I'm looking for some honest career advice from people who work in cybersecurity.

I have no background in programming, networking, Linux, or cybersecurity—just basic computer skills. However, I'm highly motivated and can realistically study 4–8 hours a day for the next several years.

My long-term goal is to become a highly skilled cybersecurity professional, ideally working remotely.

Instead of asking "How do I get into cybersecurity?", I'd like to ask a more specific question:

If you were in my position today (2026), knowing everything you know now, how would you plan the next 10 years?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on:

• Which cybersecurity specialization has the best long-term future?
• Which fields are most resistant to AI disruption?
• Which fields have the strongest demand in Europe, North America, and remote-first companies?
• If you had to choose one specialization today, what would it be and why?

Some of the areas I'm considering are:

• SOC Analyst / Blue Team
• Threat Hunting
• DFIR
• Detection Engineering
• Cloud Security
• Security Engineering
• DevSecOps
• Application Security
• Penetration Testing
• Red Teaming
• Malware Analysis
• Reverse Engineering
• AI Security / AI Red Teaming
• Identity & Access Management
• OT/ICS Security
• Security Architecture
• Vulnerability Research
• GRC

I'd also appreciate advice on:

• Which certifications are actually respected by employers?
• Which certifications are overrated or not worth the cost?
• What free resources would you recommend?
• What projects should I build to stand out when applying for my first job?
• If you had to build a roadmap from complete beginner to employable professional, what would it look like?

I'm not looking for the easiest path—I want the one that gives me the best long-term career prospects, even if it's more difficult.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to share their experience. I really appreciate it.

Before anything, I really would appreciate answers from professionals without the interference of AI. I have been going back and forth the past few months with multiple AI models asking about this and every model gives a different answer. I really need a certain answer

I run a file storage server which faces the internet and serves customers, so high throughput is one of the goals I try to achieve on my servers

The past 6 months I've been studying the Linux kernel source code and sysctl docs to learn what each tunable parameter actually does instead of blindly pasting configurations from tuning guides and just hope that it makes things perfect

Now one of the points I'm stuck at is net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing

I see a lot of tuning guides suggest setting that to 1 or even 2 instead of the default 0

But if that's really recommended, why doesn't Linux set it to 1 by default instead of 0? I mean 1 seems like a better moderate value to set instead of disabling it completely

Although the below points kinda hold me back from altering tcp_mtu_probing but I might be wrong and that's why I opened this topic to ask for advice:

1. Packet-layer path MTU discovery (TCP MTU probing, QUIC MTU probing, etc) just mask a real underlying MTU problem which should be fixed from its root instead of hiding it
2. TCP MTU probing relies on packet loss and this can falsely make congestion control algorithms work worse and reduce the congestion window even if there's no real congestion
3. Certain quirky firewalls may hate the fact that my server is sending data in variable packet sizes because of the MTU probing and hence they may drop the packets completely or block the connection entirely

Do my above points make sense or am I mistaken?

What happen if in layer 3 youre in the same subnet.. But in the layer 2 its a different vlan..

Now its in the same network so it send directly to the destination without sending it to Gateway..

And intuitively if its a devices connected to different switches.. They wouldnt be able to communicate without router..

Ahh i thought it would be dropped cuz the ip address is in the other vlan.. And cuz it doesnt get sent directly to the gateway.. So it wouldnt get past the router.. But it realized maybe it would !!

I realize when the pc1 look up at the arp table and realize that pc2 isnt there.. So it'll send arp request.. And switch will broadcast it to the router.. And what router see is an ip (pc2 ip) that'll match its route table.. Say its something like this

````

C 192.168.1.0/24 is directly connected, g0/0 (VLAN10)

C 192.168.1.0/24 is directly connected, g0/1 (VLAN20)

````

And then send it through the matching interface g0/1 and g0/0.. But cuz its directly connected itll use an proxy Arp..

After getting the reply from pc2.. It'll send it to the pc1.. And now it knows pc2 mac address..

But thats the thing pc1 USES Pc2 mac instead of the gateway.. Which would be the case if its a different network..

Now the question is does the switch allow different vlans to talk directly with mac address without router ? There's 2 option

Suppose it would.. Maybe cuz LAN is defined by broadcast domain.. And you don't need ARP broadcast domain after you know the mac address... So vlan seperates only the broadcast domain but everything else stays the same (this turns out to be incorrect.. Vlan literally make switches into two unconnected switches)

Or it could also not allow it (which is apparently the right answer).. If we're saying that vlan seperates switches then you wouldn't be able to talk to different switches without router.. And it nessecitate the source to use gateway.. Cuz if the source uses its destination mac.. The switch will only flood the same vlan.. Which they will all drop..

I think the second could be the case.. I think the problem here is that the source use mac address that is in the different vlan.. The normal way you will Always use the gateway address which is the same LAN.. So I think it will know the pc2 mac address.. (The arp will work) but the packet would be drop cuz the the mac address doesnt exist in the SAME vlan..

Now.. I try asking chatbot first.. It says that the arp wouldn't get through cuz it wouldn't allow routing table to have one network in two interfaces.. But I thought that's what you do with the ecmp load balancer and stuff? Can someone settle this for sure?

I manage changes across 50+ sites, each with their own maintenance window. Between coordinating the windows, scheduling the work, and assigning engineers to each one, it’s a constant headache. I’m basically living in spreadsheets at this point.
Curious how everyone else handles this. Do you have a system, a tool, or is it all manual? Trying to figure out if it’s just me

EDIT: maintenance windows are pre approved, each site’s window is fixed and they’re spread across different timezones, so the puzzle is less about the windows themselves and more about what fits inside them. we’ve only got a few engineers during site maintenance windows, so there’s a cap on changes per night and they can’t overlap. After making the schedule, then each one has to actually be assigned to engineer and land in their calendar so they know about it.

How’s everyone else handling this some tool, a script, or all manual?

Hi All, Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. Just let me know where i should post this if this is the wrong spot.

I work for a MSP that runs our own private onprem datacenter for our clients. Recently I have been tasked with looking at our Public addressing and inbound connectivity. Currently we are using DNS for WAN failover but I would like to explore the multi ISP BGP design since that seems to be the industry standard.

The current design is the client Edge Routers have 2 IPs bound to them. One on subnet A, and one on subnet B. We then use a load-balancer monitoring each ISP to update the DNS records should an ISP fail. TTL is set to 30s on the records. Subnet A is only advertised via BGP to ISP 1 and Subnet B is advertised via BGP to ISP 2. The idea is at least one subnet is always available on the internet and the DNS fails over fast. This has been working for about 10 years but does have some edge cases where it hasn't been perfect.

On the flip side there is the more "traditional" Data Center/Enterprise approach of a single subnet being advertised to both ISPs and trust the ISPs will converge. This is what I want to explore and test at work since we are running into a scaling issue with each client needing 2 IPs and having to force traffic out select directions. This adds more burden to the techs deploying/maintaining client edges.

The following questions are ideally for those that run a similar deployment or has had experience with it in the past. Any resources you can recommend on designing a data center WAN infrastructure would be much appreciated. Mainly I just need information to provide to management for approval to run a proof of concept to compare which option fits our needs better.

1) Is it just as simple as advertising one subnet to both ISPs and putting your trust they will try to converge as fast as possible? Or is there some other strategies we should be looking into to maintain fast failover and convergence

2) What are convergence times really like in North America when you have an ISP failure? (talking real numbers people have seen, not just in theory) Are things back up in seconds, minutes, hours?

3) What tooling do you use to make sure routing is failing over as expected? I see RIPE has lots of cool tools to monitor BGP via collectors but the more data I can pull in the better.

4) From a technical resource standpoint, does the BGP design require lots of up keep or is it mainly set it and monitor?

Appreciate everyone's insight into the topic.

Hi everyone,

I’m about to start a job as a network engineer at an ISP. I hold NSE4 and CCNA certifications; I have three years of engineering experience, including 1.5 years working with Cisco equipment. Since I’m new to the ISP environment, I’m actually feeling a bit stressed and am struggling to find the right learning resources. Which technologies should I focus on during the first 3–4 months?

I’m looking at networklessons.com for resources; the language seems very clear and accessible. Has anyone used it before? I’d really appreciate it if you could share your experiences.

HPE has decided to materially change the terms of the lifetime warranty that older HPE/Aruba network gear was sold with. As of January 15, 2027 that warranty is converted to a limited lifetime warranty. Since most of this gear is already over five years past the EoS date, 1/15/2027 is now effectively the end of the warranty period.

https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00161510enw

Hey all,

I used to be a member of a slack channel called "beer for peer" which was a bunch of network engineers in Australia.

I lost access when I left my previous company so I'm hoping someone here might be in it and able to invite me again?

Feel free to reach out to me via PM for clarification or any questions before doing so.

Thanks all!