Your Cybersecurity Degree May Not Have Prepared You for the Real World

Why choosing the right cybersecurity program matters—and how to match your degree to your career goals.

Here’s my controversial opinion: many standalone cybersecurity degree programs are broken for students who want to be technical practitioners.

Let me be clear: cybersecurity has many career paths, and not all require deep technical knowledge. GRC specialists, policy analysts, compliance officers, and cybersecurity managers can be incredibly successful without understanding TCP/IP internals. Many programs are designed specifically for these business-focused roles, and that’s perfectly valid.

But if you want to be a security engineer, incident responder, security architect, or penetration tester—someone who actually touches the technology—you need solid technical foundations. This is where I see the biggest gaps.

The Pattern

Here’s what most people don’t realize: most of us who’ve been in cybersecurity for a while didn’t start here. We were system administrators, network engineers, developers, or IT generalists first. We learned to secure things because we understood how they worked.

The security architects I trust most? Former developers who understand application logic. The incident responders I want on my team? Ex-sysadmins who can troubleshoot at 3 AM when monitoring tools are down.

The Problem

I’ve interviewed cybersecurity graduates for technical roles who could recite NIST frameworks but couldn’t explain how TCP/IP works. If you have a cybersecurity degree and can’t tell me what ports common services run on (DNS, HTTP, HTTPS) or why we shouldn’t use telnet, that’s a problem.

For technical cybersecurity work, security is a specialization within computer science and IT. You can’t secure what you don’t understand.

Choosing the Right Program

If you want technical roles (security engineer, incident responder, architect), look for programs requiring:

• Multiple programming courses beyond scripting
• Hands-on networking labs with real equipment
• Operating systems internals, not just interfaces
• System administration across Windows and Linux
• Database design and administration

These programs are typically housed in computer science or engineering departments, not business schools.

If you want management/policy roles, look for programs emphasizing:

• Risk management frameworks
• Regulatory compliance and audit processes
• Business continuity planning
• Communication and stakeholder management

These programs are typically housed in business schools or public policy departments.

Red flags for technical programs:

• Heavy emphasis on certifications over hands-on experience
• Curriculum focused primarily on frameworks
• No programming or system administration requirements
• Labs that are mostly theoretical

My Recommendation

If you want to break into a technical cybersecurity role, I suggest a pragmatic approach: major in computer science or MIS (a program with solid foundations) and minor in cybersecurity.

This means you have greater flexibility and marketability in the job market. You’ll graduate with the technical skills that cybersecurity programs often skip, plus the security knowledge to apply them. If cybersecurity hiring is tight when you graduate, you can work in development or IT and transition later—exactly like most of us did.

What to Do

For students: Match the program to your career goals. Ask what percentage of graduates go into technical vs. management roles.

For new graduates: If your program lacked fundamentals, fill the gaps yourself. Build things before you break them.

Can’t break into cybersecurity yet? Don’t despair. Hone foundational IT skills in traditional roles—system administration, development, DevOps. Be the best security advocate you can be in whatever role you land.

When you transition to cybersecurity, you’ll be infinitely more valuable than someone who learned security theory without understanding the underlying technology.

The Bottom Line

The best technical cybersecurity programs treat security as applied computer science and IT. The programs producing competent technical practitioners require strong foundations. The ones producing framework memorizers don’t.

Choose accordingly.

Speaking of understanding fundamentals: if your organization needs someone who gets both the technical foundations and business realities of cybersecurity, let’s talk. I’m exploring CISO, head of security (full-time or fractional), and advisory opportunities.

Think I’m wrong? Want to argue about whether we’re producing security professionals or framework memorizers? Find me on LinkedIn.