Mete Demirci

Before I started studying for my first certification, I did something that was probably both useful and slightly insane. I researched almost the entire certification ecosystem. Before answering a single practice question, I looked at the different providers, their certification paths, how employers viewed them, how useful their content appeared to be and where they seemed to fit into an actual IT or cybersecurity career. I looked at CompTIA, Cisco, Microsoft, AWS, ISC2, ISACA, OffSec, GIAC and many others. I compared entry-level certifications, professional certifications, technical certifications, management certifications and certifications that seemed to exist mainly because companies like putting logos into job descriptions.

MeteSec started with a fairly simple realization: I understand things much better when I have to put them into words. Reading documentation, completing a course or working through a lab can create the feeling that a topic makes sense. Sometimes it really does. At other times, you only notice the gaps when you try to explain the same subject without looking at the original material. Writing changes the way I engage with a topic. I have to decide what the main point actually is, which details matter and how the individual pieces connect. I have to question whether I understood the reasoning or merely remembered the result. If I cannot explain something clearly, there is a good chance that I have not understood it as well as I thought.