One of the more difficult aspects of getting started in any new field is knowing where to begin. When I got started in this field in 2000 there was very little in the way of getting started. We had some weird websites and lots of posturing and belittlement. That, and we had a lot of odd folks asking you to “Cyber”….

So yea… It pretty much blew.

We also hear this industry is going to grow by 200-400% over the next few years. That is a lot of new people coming in. And for all that is holy and right in the world, we need more videos which do not feature cats or hippos farting. Not that there is anything wrong with that… It just has nothing to do with IT security.

Pictured… Noting to do with this article.

So, to that end, I have a few videos for everyone.

The first one is an intro to Linux video:

Intro to Linux from SANS Institute on Vimeo.

It goes through the basics and fundamentals of how to approach the command line on a Linux system. Is it comprehensive? Nope. Is it enough to get you started? Absolutely.

Next is a video on TCP/IP:

This video will get you a rough idea of what is going on with the TCP/IP header to drive packets around the internet.

Finally, the last video is getting started with tcpdump. This is one of the more important sniffers out there today. Sure, Wireshark is cool, but tcpdump is fast and very flexible.

Check it out here: