Week 1: Why I Chose Cybersecurity (And Why You Should Consider It Too)

The Moment It Clicked

I was sitting in my car between delivery runs in Sydney, scrolling through job listings on my phone, when it hit me: I cannot do this for the next twenty years.

Not because delivery driving is bad work. It pays the bills. But I kept running the maths in my head — the wear on the car, the unpredictable hours, the ceiling that never moves. I had the same feeling in aged care. And before that, in real estate back in India. Good jobs, honest work, but none of them felt like they were building towards something bigger.

That evening, I started googling. Not casually — properly. “Career change in your forties,” “high demand industries Australia,” “jobs that don’t need a degree.” The same field kept surfacing in every list, every Reddit thread, every career advice article: cybersecurity.

Why Cybersecurity and Not Something Else

I need to be upfront about something: yes, the money caught my attention first. Entry-level cybersecurity analysts in Australia earn AUD $60,000-$85,000, and the field is growing faster than almost any other (source: PayScale Australia, as of 2024). After years of unpredictable gig income, a stable salary in that range sounded like a different life.

But that’s not why I stayed interested. What actually hooked me was this: cybersecurity values problem-solvers, not just people with computer science degrees. The more I researched, the more I found stories of people who’d made the switch from completely unrelated fields — nurses, teachers, chefs, military veterans. The ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study 2024 reported a global gap of approximately 4 million professionals (source: ISC2, as of 2024). The industry is not turning people away. It is actively looking for them.

And then there was the work itself. Cybersecurity is about protecting people. It is about thinking like an attacker so you can defend against one. Coming from aged care, where the entire job was protecting vulnerable people, that resonated with me more than I expected.

What I Bring from My Previous Life

Here is what nobody tells you about career changing: your old experience is not wasted. It is just not obvious how it transfers until you sit down and think about it.

In aged care, I followed strict compliance procedures every single shift. Daily routines, hygiene support, meal coordination, incident documentation, care plans that had to be accurate down to the minute. That is not so different from following security frameworks and writing incident reports.

In real estate, I learned to explain complicated things — loan structures, market conditions, legal clauses — to people who had no background in any of it. In cybersecurity, communicating risk to non-technical stakeholders is a daily requirement.

Even delivery driving taught me something: working under pressure with incomplete information, making quick decisions, and adapting when the plan falls apart. That sounds a lot like working in a security operations centre during an incident.

I am not pretending these experiences make me a cybersecurity expert. They do not. But they give me a foundation of soft skills that, according to every hiring manager blog post I have read, are genuinely hard to teach.

What Terrifies Me About This

I believe in being honest, so here it is: this scares me.

I did not grow up around computers. I did not tinker with hardware as a kid. When people casually mention TCP/IP or subnetting or kernel modules, my brain goes blank for a second before I remind myself that every expert started as a beginner.

The financial risk is real too. Every hour I spend studying is an hour I am not earning. If this does not work out, I have invested months into something with no return. That thought keeps me up some nights.

And the impostor syndrome — I already feel it, and I have barely started. There is a voice that says, who are you to think you can do this? I have decided to let that voice talk, acknowledge it, and then open my laptop anyway.

What I Have Done So Far

Actions speak louder than fears, so here is what my first week actually looked like:

• Built this website. You are reading it. MyCyberSecurityPath.com is both my learning journal and hopefully a guide for others making the same leap.
• Started studying CompTIA A+ fundamentals. Hardware, operating systems, the basics of how computers actually work. My CompTIA A+ study guide tracks what I am covering.
• Set up a home lab. A free virtual lab on my laptop where I can practise without breaking anything important. I wrote about the setup in my home lab guide.
• Mapped out a 12-month roadmap. A+ first, then Security+, then hands-on practice with TryHackMe and my home lab, then job applications.

Is it a lot for one week? Maybe. But momentum matters when you are starting something new. I would rather do too much in week one than too little.

What This Blog Will Be

Every Thursday, I will publish a post documenting what I learned that week. Not polished tutorials written by someone who already knows everything — real-time notes from someone figuring it out.

You will see my wins. You will also see my failures, my confusion, my “I spent three hours on something that should have taken twenty minutes” moments. That is the honest version of learning, and I think it is more useful than pretending everything comes easily.

If you are considering a career change into cybersecurity — especially if you have no IT background — I hope this blog shows you what the process actually looks like. Not the highlight reel. The full picture.

Follow Along

This is week 1 of what I expect to be a long journey. If you want to follow along, check back every Thursday for a new post. I will be covering everything from my study sessions to the tools I am learning to the moments where I question whether I am cut out for this.

Spoiler: I think I am. But I will let the journey prove it.

Individual results vary based on location, experience, market conditions, and effort invested.