Introduction
Welcome to the wonderful world of Jump-start Your SOC Analyst Career! You picked this book up because you want to get into the action! Into the money! Into the challenges that lie ahead! We will tell you how wonderful and rewarding this career is, but first let us say something about infosec.
If you get into the cybersecurity industry and you aren’t connected to the community, you are missing out. There are all kinds of micro infosec communities and communities for special groups of people, but in contrast there are communities that want to include everyone. There are extremely esoteric communities filled with mystery and secrets, there are communities for just CISOs and communities for just engineers, there is a military community, communities for Bill and Bob, communities for the
government sector, a community of breakers and makers alike… if there is only one common trait that people coming into security want, it is a sense of community – and infosec has it! It is really hard to relate to people in the normal world sometimes, especially if you are starting out and keyboarding alone. We promise you there are many other people that want to keyboard alone next to you. It happens all the time at conferences! There are so many amazing people in the community, and sometimes they don’t
always get along, but in 3–6 months, it will be like it never happened. Our goal for this book is to get you in the chair in the SOC you dream about and open your eyes that no matter who you are, cybersecurity is for you.
This book will cover what you need to know that we have deemed to be important to know as a SOC analyst. There are a lot of open jobs in cybersecurity, but there are also a lot of candidates that want those jobs.
The challenge is that there are not a lot of the right kind of candidates to fill them. We explain to you what the right kind of candidate is and give you the knowledge to prepare you for interviews. We can’t promise to take you from technical zero to hero in the pages of this book. As an author I want you to trust me, and I will tell you how to be successful with this book, but you need to have a baseline of technical skills. Ideally by the point you pick up this book, you will have been learning IT skills for a while.
The combined contributions of the creators of this book, Tyler Wall and Jarrett Rodrick, and chapter authors Anand Purohit and Jason Tunis, are orchestrated to give you, the reader, the advantage. Ending this book are five stories from people who have traversed the path of a SOC analyst.
The roadmap to cybersecurity success is long, and it’s not an easy road at times. It isn’t a straight vertical path for some either. It winds, it narrows, and it goes all over the place. To be successful in cybersecurity can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For some that might mean holding the torch and power of a CISO, but if you really think hard about that path, it may not make sense for you. There are technical professionals that make more than a CISO, and their jobs are much more stable. Their heads aren’t on
a chopping block every time something goes bad. That is not to say that being a CISO and leading a security team isn’t rewarding; I just illustrate the example to explain that paths and end goals are different from geek to geek according to personal aspirations, but the very first step to a rewarding career is always the same: getting a foot into this industry. Out of all the steps in cybersecurity, it is the most important. The foundation of a cybersecurity career can happen in the very first year as a SOC analyst. The
first year as a SOC analyst is very overwhelming, and like drinking through a fire hose, expect to be satisfied but extremely uncomfortable. What is in this book will help you start your career as a SOC analyst and empower you to launch on day one.

Get ready for a rewarding career in cybersecurity…, and on day one, pick a good chair.