Getting Into Cybersecurity Without a Four-Year Degree (Yet)

People assume you need a four-year CS degree to get into cybersecurity. You don't. I'm working full-time in this field, and I started before I finished my bachelor's.

I went to Anne Arundel Community College for my associate's in Security, Information Assurance, and Cybersecurity. I picked it because it was affordable, I could live at home, and I wasn't sure yet what kind of career I wanted. I liked tech, and I was curious how systems break. That was enough to start.

AACC gave me something I didn't expect: a foundation without the noise. Small classes. Professors who'd actually worked in the field. A curriculum that spent its time on things that map to real environments: networking fundamentals, encryption, access controls. I built a home lab on the side that ate most of my weekends.

By the time I had my associate's, I was already working as a network engineer. I'm finishing my bachelor's in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics at Stevenson now. Not for the credential. The work has me wanting to go deeper on the strategy and policy side.

If you're stuck on whether community college is good enough, or whether you can do this without a perfect résumé: yes. Start somewhere. Build things. Break things in a sandbox you control and figure out why they broke. That's most of the job.

The credentials catch up eventually. The curiosity has to come first.