Otherwise, you’re just guessing with style.
Let’s be honest:
Everyone wants to get into cybersecurity right now. It’s the hot thing.
Cool hoodie?… Check.
Kali Linux VM? … Check.
HackTheBox account? … Check.
Knows what an IP address is? … Nada?
Wait… what?
Hold up.
Before you start yelling “firewall” in every IT conversation or try to hack your own Wi-Fi router (again), do yourself — and your future career — a favor:
Learn networking first.
Why? Because you can’t secure what you don’t understand.
Imagine trying to become a lifeguard… but you never learned how water works.
That’s what trying to do cybersecurity without networking feels like.
You’re guarding something, sure — but you don’t know where it starts, where it ends, or what a packet even looks like. (Hint: it’s not Amazon delivery.)
Networking is the map. Cybersecurity is the defense plan.
You need to know how data moves before you can protect it.
Otherwise, you’re just clicking buttons on tools like Wireshark and Nmap with the same energy as someone mashing keys in Tekken.
Here’s what you’ll hear in cyber jobs:
“Check the flow of traffic through the firewall.”
“Did the DNS resolve properly?”
“What’s the NAT rule doing?”
If your answer is “Uhh…” while Googling “how to firewall,” we have a problem.
Learn the basics first. It’s not that scary.
Okay fine, subnetting might make you question your life choices.
But the rest? Totally doable.
Here’s a cheat list:
- IP addressing (like, know what 192.168.1.1 means)
- Subnetting (yes, you can survive it)
- TCP vs UDP (not a boy band)
- DNS, DHCP, NAT, VLANs
- Common ports (hint: 80 = web, 443 = secure web, 3389 = remote cry for help)
What happens if you skip networking?
Well…
- You’ll get owned by a misconfigured switch.
- You’ll think every scan is an attack.
- You’ll panic when you see a traceroute.
- And someday, you’ll sit in an interview sweating bullets because someone said “BGP.”
Cybersecurity is 50% knowing the threats — and 50% knowing how normal stuff is supposed to work. That second half? All networking.
Learn networking first. It makes you dangerous — in a good way.
You’ll:
- Understand what tools like Wireshark are actually showing you
- Catch problems before they blow up
- Build better firewalls
- Detect attacks faster
- Be able to say “It’s not a DDoS, it’s just bad routing” — and look like a genius
TL;DR:
- Cyber is sexy, but networking is the glow-up you need.
- Learn how stuff connects, routes, and breaks.
- Then go break it on purpose (ethically, of course).
- You can’t defend the castle if you don’t know where the gates are.