Does a military background make you well-prepared for cybersecurity?

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There is a component to leadership that is cultivated in you in the military. You get your combat boots and rifle, and then they give you a step-by-step course on how to lead a team. That transitions well into the civilian space where everybody's trying to figure that out. But what doesn’t necessarily translate well is being able to approximate how long it might take to do something properly. That leadership gives you an uncanny ability to prepare and plan. It could take four or five months to get something done in the public sector or in defense, where you make slow incremental progress, but in the commercial space, the same thing can be done in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. It's a very different dichotomy in that sense. That leadership has served me incredibly well.

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The discipline instilled as a result of military experience along with the ability to respond to uncertain situations in limited amount of time is superb preparation for a career in cybersecurity

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It can, but it doesn't guarantee success in the field. It has been my experience that while working with those who have a military background, they tend have greater situational awareness when it comes to CSec-Ops. However, depending on what they did in the military, this "heightened awareness" is not guaranteed.

Does a military background make you well-prepared for cybersecurity?

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