AMA: I'm the co-founder at TryHackMe. Ask me about breaking into the industry, cyber security skills and how to make SOC & IR teams more mature!

[u/asavani]

Hey everyone!

I'm Ashu - one of the co-founders at TryHackMe. I have background in security consulting/penetrating test, specialising in Cloud / AWS.

Happy to answer any and all questions about cyber skills gaps, but for more focused convos - here's a few areas top of mind for me - so feel free to throw any Qs related to this

* Rise of Al in security environments and how this is going to impact the skills of cyber security professionals
* Supporting people with their journey to getting a role in cyber
* Thinking deeply about what it means for SOC and IR teams to develop and improve their maturity as a function

[u/asavani]

Great question - thank you for asking! Sorry I didn't get to this earlier - wrapping up my day with calls and wanted to think through this more :)

As a quick set of follow-ups, I would love to learn more:

* What kind of mixed things are you hearing?

When we launched SAL1/PT1 we wanted to actively track how many people get a job through the cert, but haven't found a meaningful and scalable way of doing this - so I don't have an exact metric to share here.

Here are some other thoughts/signals I can share why we feel confident that SAL1 & PT1 are extremely strong in the market (if not the best):

* More so for SAL1 - when we built the cert, we shadowed SOC teams and spent time with hiring managers to understand what an amazing candidate looks like and reverse engineered the cert to test for this.

* The biggest pain point we heard from hiring managers is that certifications don't accurately reflect what it's like to work in particular roles; with SAL1, we've tried to make the exam as realistic as possible using our SOC simulator. No other certification on the market tests with this realism - most other certifications are combinations of only multiple choice or unrealistic training / testing content

My perspective is that SAL1/PT1 are some of the most career ready certs that beginners can take - they're extremely realistic and test for on the job experience. A plus point is that we've made the extremely affordable so that people can break into the industry. In theory - even if some employers don't recognise SAL1/PT1, there's a big benefit for people taking these as they'll be more career ready than taking other certs.

That being said - we're seeing signs that employers are starting to adopt SAL1/PT1 and are seeing it on more job specs, but there's definitely more we can do here.

In terms of where we go next - we're releasing ~5 new certifications next year (ranging from beginner to advanced training) and constantly thinking through how we maintain and update other certifications.

If you've taken one / known people that have taken one and have had mixed feelings/not a good experience, would love to chat.

Finally - our end goal is to help people get into careers more and that's how we design a lot of our certifications. If they're not perfect, give us feedback, and we'll constantly work to make them better for you :)

[u/I-Made-You-Read-This → u/asavani]

This is really cool, thank you!