My Y:
Through the many job postings I go through daily, I realized many companies were requesting a plethora of knowledge and experience using specific tools. I wondered how I, a recent grad, could get that experience. Turning to Reddit, I found that starting a HomeLab was the perfect way to get hands-on experience and put my certification knowledge to use.
Tailoring the Lab to My Goals:
One of the beauties of a home lab is its flexibility. I began by defining my specific goals and areas of interest within cybersecurity. Whether it was network security, penetration testing, or digital forensics, I'm starting to build a plan to customize my lab to align with my aspirations, ensuring that every aspect of the setup would contribute to my professional development and my interests.
The Stuff(Hardware/Hypervisor):
I already had my personal gaming computer in my room that I built 3 years earlier. The specs:
CPU- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6 Core 3.59 GHZ
GPU- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
RAM- 16GB
HDD- 3 TB
Virtualization software played a pivotal role in transforming my hardware into a versatile cybersecurity playground. I explored different options and settled on a platform that provided the necessary features and compatibility with the operating systems and security tools I intended to use. I landed on VMWare Workstation PRO for the hypervisor. PFSense for the Firewall. I plan on installing Kali and Fedora Linux. On top of that, I want to install a SIEM, run my home network off of AD and practice GPOs and log monitoring. Downloading boxes from VulnHub and doing some attack & defend practice. Getting hands-on time with pen-testing tools through THM/HTB, and doing some bug bounty hunting. Some cloud experience too, setting up a VPC, and running cloud-based attack machines. Doing it in AWS, GCP, & Azure. Setting up Kubernetes clusters, working on my scripting and automation and whatever else I want to learn. I'll log and track all my experiences here for good documentation.
