Job outlook for career change into ethical hacking?

[Vim Fuego]

I've been made redundant and like many others am going to need to retrain pronto into a sustainable job that pays reasonably.
I'm in consultation with The Learning People who make some fairly bold claims about your employability and earning potential if you cross their palm with silver.
In particular they are suggesting an "ethical hacking" route as its in demand and often able to work from home which is a high priority for me.
My question is to you the IT professionals is, is does this sound right?.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and any advice on the industry is greatly appreciated.

[rogerfederer]

A lot of these 'education providers' went bust during the beginnings of the last recession.

Why would you pay or engage a company to teach you something you can learn yourself using the same course materials from the relevant professional institutions?

Use CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and adapt your coding skills in order to enter the market. Do you think a future employer wants to see that you studied at some random Trump-University style noname institute? No, they want the core certifications.

If you're struggling for cash now and every pound is precious then there are plenty of library books out there and other free resources to achieve enough information in order to study these topics and resources. It's good to aim for general information and not provider specific. CEH is more valuable than a Microsoft published azure security course, as you can read the material of the latter and understand it without passing the exam.

Good luck. Use your head and don't rely on anybody else to teach you anything, teach yourself and save the cash.

[hairymouse]

I've been made redundant and like many others am going to need to retrain pronto into a sustainable job that pays reasonably.
I'm in consultation with The Learning People who make some fairly bold claims about your employability and earning potential if you cross their palm with silver.
In particular they are suggesting an "ethical hacking" route as its in demand and often able to work from home which is a high priority for me.
My question is to you the IT professionals is, is does this sound right?.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and any advice on the industry is greatly appreciated.

I noticed that you are not including yourself as an "IT professional", which is an immediate red flag. If you aren't already pretty knowledgeable about the way computer networks and the internet works, then starting from scratch is going to be a big ask. Sounds like a ripoff course to me.

Companies don't hire "ethical hackers", they hire it security professionals, and you don't learn that in one course. I believe it's more like a four year degree to start, and then some experience on top of that.

[jayn200]

A lot of these 'education providers' went bust during the beginnings of the last recession.

Why would you pay or engage a company to teach you something you can learn yourself using the same course materials from the relevant professional institutions?

Use CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and adapt your coding skills in order to enter the market. Do you think a future employer wants to see that you studied at some random Trump-University style noname institute? No, they want the core certifications.

If you're struggling for cash now and every pound is precious then there are plenty of library books out there and other free resources to achieve enough information in order to study these topics and resources. It's good to aim for general information and not provider specific. CEH is more valuable than a Microsoft published azure security course, as you can read the material of the latter and understand it without passing the exam.

Good luck. Use your head and don't rely on anybody else to teach you anything, teach yourself and save the cash.

I don't really know anything about ethical hacking but I do agree with this general sentiment. Focus on the certs, self study. If you feel you need a course then do a free course, but personally I just get a cert/exam study guide book and read that. Whenever I mention a physical book people always think I'm old but it works really well for me. Its easy to just google what the best study resources are for a specific cert.

I do agree also that going from 0 technical knowledge into security is probably more difficult than some other areas. You need a lot of general knowledge. You need to know a bit about how the hardware works, networks work, Operating systems, software, databases, coding.

Don't want to discourage you but there are some IT specialities that you don't need such a strong foundation for that might be easier if you're trying to come from no IT knowledge.