Cyber Security Rig Advice-ish

[Itscelliott]

Hey guys. I am new to this forum but a buddy of mine gave me nothing but great news and words about this forum. I am kinda at a loss and don't even know if this is in the right area or not so please roast me if I'm in the wrong area but...... Here's the question.



I am starting my journey into Cyber Security, I am going to college for it, and working on getting CS and Networking Certs on the side best I can; question is, does anyone know what I may need for this (school and such) and or need for the real world when I hopefully get a promotion into this field (such as computer specs, and or needed software {which I'm assuming will come with time and knowledge})???

I'm assuming I would need at least..
i5 or equivalent AMD
12gb ram
&
I don't think much else should matter/make a difference
(HDD size, screen size, GPU).

Any specifications and recommendations are welcome as well


Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated and all is welcome... Thanks again!

C

 

[Avast-Team]

Hey guys. I am new to this forum but a buddy of mine gave me nothing but great news and words about this forum. I am kinda at a loss and don't even know if this is in the right area or not so please roast me if I'm in the wrong area but...... Here's the question.



I am starting my journey into Cyber Security, I am going to college for it, and working on getting CS and Networking Certs on the side best I can; question is, does anyone know what I may need for this (school and such) and or need for the real world when I hopefully get a promotion into this field (such as computer specs, and or needed software {which I'm assuming will come with time and knowledge})???

I'm assuming I would need at least..
i5 or equivalent AMD
12gb ram
&
I don't think much else should matter/make a difference
(HDD size, screen size, GPU).

Any specifications and recommendations are welcome as well


Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated and all is welcome... Thanks again!

C

It really depends on what you will be using the machine for, exactly. Are you going to be doing pentesting from a hardware perspective, from a software perspective?

Or is it more to roll up VM's and test security suites in real world environments?

If it's the latter, then I would definitely recommend a beefy, multi-core processor or a server-type processor, and as much RAM as you can afford; running lots of VM's will require this

 

[kanewolf]

A laptop with a docking station and a good keyboard, mouse, monitor and USB3 backup drive would be my recommendation.

 

[Itscelliott]

Hey guys. I am new to this forum but a buddy of mine gave me nothing but great news and words about this forum. I am kinda at a loss and don't even know if this is in the right area or not so please roast me if I'm in the wrong area but...... Here's the question.



I am starting my journey into Cyber Security, I am going to college for it, and working on getting CS and Networking Certs on the side best I can; question is, does anyone know what I may need for this (school and such) and or need for the real world when I hopefully get a promotion into this field (such as computer specs, and or needed software {which I'm assuming will come with time and knowledge})???

I'm assuming I would need at least..
i5 or equivalent AMD
12gb ram
&
I don't think much else should matter/make a difference
(HDD size, screen size, GPU).

Any specifications and recommendations are welcome as well


Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated and all is welcome... Thanks again!

C

It really depends on what you will be using the machine for, exactly. Are you going to be doing pentesting from a hardware perspective, from a software perspective?

Or is it more to roll up VM's and test security suites in real world environments?

If it's the latter, then I would definitely recommend a beefy, multi-core processor or a server-type processor, and as much RAM as you can afford; running lots of VM's will require this

Honestly, I have no idea {Sorry, I know how bad this sounds}. If I would have to guess more of monitoring and testing (in the real world)?

Again I'm very sorry I have little to no idea, I just (unfortunately) need a laptop because I don't have room or a place for a desktop. In this case unfortunately I think a kinda beefy quad core and maybe 16gbs of ram is about my limit :/

 

[Itscelliott]

Kane, aren't laptop docks specific to a very limited number of laptops, many of which are lower end specs?

 

[Avast-Team]

Hey guys. I am new to this forum but a buddy of mine gave me nothing but great news and words about this forum. I am kinda at a loss and don't even know if this is in the right area or not so please roast me if I'm in the wrong area but...... Here's the question.



I am starting my journey into Cyber Security, I am going to college for it, and working on getting CS and Networking Certs on the side best I can; question is, does anyone know what I may need for this (school and such) and or need for the real world when I hopefully get a promotion into this field (such as computer specs, and or needed software {which I'm assuming will come with time and knowledge})???

I'm assuming I would need at least..
i5 or equivalent AMD
12gb ram
&
I don't think much else should matter/make a difference
(HDD size, screen size, GPU).

Any specifications and recommendations are welcome as well


Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated and all is welcome... Thanks again!

C

It really depends on what you will be using the machine for, exactly. Are you going to be doing pentesting from a hardware perspective, from a software perspective?

Or is it more to roll up VM's and test security suites in real world environments?

If it's the latter, then I would definitely recommend a beefy, multi-core processor or a server-type processor, and as much RAM as you can afford; running lots of VM's will require this

Honestly, I have no idea {Sorry, I know how bad this sounds}. If I would have to guess more of monitoring and testing (in the real world)?

Again I'm very sorry I have little to no idea, I just (unfortunately) need a laptop because I don't have room or a place for a desktop. In this case unfortunately I think a kinda beefy quad core and maybe 16gbs of ram is about my limit :/

16GB RAM is enough to run a simple VM environment depending on the specs of the machines you're setting up. Personally, I haven't tested running Hyper-V/etc on an i5 but I can say it works well on AMD 6-8 core machines with 16GB of RAM.

SSD's also help out a lot if you are running multiple VM's!

 

[kanewolf]

Kane, aren't laptop docks specific to a very limited number of laptops, many of which are lower end specs?

The "business" laptops typically have docking station options. The docking stations are model specific (maybe brand specific). But they allow you to leave all your peripherals connected and just pop the laptop loose. The benefits of a desktop and the convenience of a laptop.