How to get started in cybersecurity?

Heyy how are you doing?? aren't you glad that you came across this article, well me too.

This article is mainly targeted at beginners who want to get into Cybersecurity, but let me tell you a bit about myself I have been in security since I was in 8th grade (I'm in my first year of engineering now) and have successfully found bugs in corporations like Netflix, tumblr, redbull, etc.

Without wasting much time let's get to the million dollar question

So how do you get started??

That actually depends on what you want to focus on and get into, I know that isn't the answer you were expecting but cybersecurity is not about a person in a hoodie sitting in a dark room and typing random stuff on his computer, it is actually divided into many branches like reverse engineering, malware analysis/development, web application hacking, mobile application hacking, social engineering, hardware hacking, car hacking, etc.

Each of these branches require a lot of effort to learn, so which one should you get into first?? whichever you are interested in, but just to give you a better understanding let me tell you about what these fields are about.

Reverse Engineering: As the name suggests it is dismantling a product(software) to see how it works and possibly find 0days(i'll write about what 0days are some other time)

Malware Analysis/development: Pretty self explanatory, it is about analysing and/or developing malware.

Web application hacking : hacking websites, taking over subdomains ,etc.

Mobile application hacking: hacking the app, finding leaked api tokens , etc.

Social Engineering: People skills , you get people to give you access to things you shouldn't be able to access.

Hardware Hacking : Hacking/modding hardware like slot machines, atm's, etc.

Car Hacking : Hacking Cars

##Now each of these fields have their own roadmaps and it depends you at the end of the day to choose which path you want to get into

But at the moment if you want to be financially stable as soon as possible web is the way to go and web3 vulnerabilities are paying tons off money, the best way to get into web application hacking would be to follow and read infosec writeups on medium, and read The web apllication hacker's handbook, Web hacking 101 and practice on hacker101 CTF. I can't really advice you on other branches but google is your friend :)

Note: It is quite easy to get overwhelmed by this field and it does require a lot of effort, I will write an article on how to avoid burnouts and deal with imposter syndrome, in the meanwhile below is a video made by liveoverflow someone who I deeply respect and admire in this field, make sure to watch it. That's it for today thank you for reading till the end have a great day(or good night).