A cybersecurity professional explains how to accelerate your career: do excellent work for your employer, but the real advancement comes from what you do outside work hours. Learning, publishing papers, volunteering with nonprofits, and attending conferences create unexpected professional opportunities.
The first thing I'm going to say is just give. I think the best things in your career are going to come— number one, you're going to do really good work in your assignments. Do for your employer. Be a really good employee and really lean into it. The things that you give outside of those work hours, though, are going to be where you really— where really things take off. And take off in ways that you just can't expect. Whether that's additional learning and study, developing, you know, your own research, publishing papers. It could be working with working groups, you know, volunteering, doing volunteer work with nonprofits who need help with cybersecurity, working with a conference, whatever. What you give outside will return to you greater than what you gave.
