When I started down this path, my motivation was simple: I wanted to help keep people’s data protected and secure. That was the thing that pulled me in, and it is what led me to the CompTIA certifications in the first place. The advice that followed was consistent: do the trifecta — A+, Network+, Security+ — and use it as your way into a SOC analyst role. That is the well-worn route, and it made sense. Entry-level SOC positions are genuinely accessible to career changers with those certifications and some hands-on practice. The logic was sound.
But somewhere along the way, as I got deeper into Linux and open source, I started to rethink how I actually wanted to put that security interest to use.
Why Linux Changed Things#
My interest in Linux was never purely practical. I am drawn to it because I think it is fundamentally good — open, auditable, owned by nobody and everybody at the same time. The more I learned about it and the open source world around it, the more I started to see how my interest in security and my growing interest in Linux could fit together into one direction rather than two separate things. Keeping data secure did not have to mean watching alerts in a security operations centre. It could mean building and securing the infrastructure that data lives on.
The more I looked into where Linux actually lives — in cloud infrastructure, in the servers running the internet, in the platforms that power most of what people use every day — the more I realised that cloud engineering was the direction that made sense for me. Not because I researched the market and concluded it was optimal, but because it is where Linux is, and Linux is what I want to work with.
Security Is Still Part of It#
Changing direction does not mean leaving security behind. I have a genuine interest in security — not just as a career angle, but from a values standpoint. Keeping people’s data secure, building systems that are difficult to compromise, thinking about how things can go wrong before they do — that matters to me.
The difference is in how I want to engage with it. A SOC role is largely alert triage: monitoring, investigating, escalating. That is important work, and I think I would find it interesting enough, but it is not where I want to spend the bulk of my working life. What I am more drawn to is security through infrastructure — hardening systems, building networks that are segmented and difficult to move through, designing things to be secure by default rather than reacting to threats after the fact.
That distinction is what changed my thinking. Security is still running through everything I am building and studying. The goal is just to pursue it through the infrastructure side rather than the operations centre side.
What Actually Changes#
The CompTIA trifecta stays. A+, Network+, and Security+ were always the plan and they remain the plan — they are the foundation, and nothing about the new direction makes them less relevant. Network+ knowledge underpins cloud networking. Security+ underpins the security-first thinking I want to bring to infrastructure. They are not security career credentials; they are the groundwork for understanding systems properly.
What changes is what comes after. The path now runs through cloud — learning a cloud provider properly, adding Azure certifications, building a homelab that simulates real infrastructure rather than detection tooling, and eventually the RHCSA which proves Linux depth at a level that matters in cloud roles.
The Long Route Is Fine#
I am aware this is the slower path. Aiming directly at cloud engineering from a standing start, without routing through a support or SOC role first, means a longer runway before the first relevant job. I have thought about that and I am comfortable with it.
This is, genuinely, something I enjoy. Linux is a hobby as much as a career goal. Building a homelab, working through certifications, writing about what I am learning — I would be doing most of this regardless of where it led professionally. And realistically, I have already been working for nineteen years. A couple more spent learning something properly, towards work I actually want to do, is time well spent — especially when it is something I would be tinkering with in my spare time anyway.
Better late than never — and better right than fast.