Security Testing Journal Entry | w/e Friday April 14, 2023

Highlights for the week

This post comes a little late, for good reason and part of what went well this week. The majority of time spent was in learning and studying. Definitely need to manage my time a little better. Some days were relegated to single tasks - not a bad thing - at the expense of a few others. Or perhaps, I should learn to quit scheduling so many things per day since two or three things can take up so much of my time. Work in progress.

What We Loved

1. Hanging out with the family on Friday is always a treasure. Not having a job has been a mixed blessing.
2. Had a couple of friends check in with my progress regarding the interview. It's what's been keeping me focused.
3. One of my friends presented a cool opportunity to work voluntarily at a school doing testing things. More on that as details are made known

What We Learned

1. Network+ - Common Security concepts, which dove-tailed nicely with the modules for Security+
2. Security+ - Common network attacks. Very interesting things.
3. Burp Suite - Easy to do XSS attacks. A lot more variations that what I had previously known so that was cool.
4. Automation - Found some time to clean up my python codebase .. which took longer than expected. Learned Unit test in JEST and Peformance/Load Testing. Need practice!
5. Cloud Pen Testing - need to retry CloudGoat. Last week's attempt didn't bear much fruit.
6. Cult.ure - Finished Chapter 6, but left areas for additional details. Will work on it over the weekend.

What We Longed For

1. More time, and more money. Need to read more.
2. A proper mentor. My current isn't working, and a new one I'm hunting down is loose on the structure of what to do. TBD

What We Loathed

1. It has been 3 weeks since I last touched base with the interview I completed. The impression I'm getting is, "I'm being considered, but they're not convinced." WTF to that!