Meet Catherine Kim, one of the winners of our 2024. Red Education Women in Cybersecurity Training Scholarships.
Now that she has completed her Check Point Software Technologies CCSA (Check Point Certified Security Administrator) training, Catherine took a moment to tell us about the application process, the training experience, and what it has meant to her. to become Check Point certified with Red Education. You can watch the video on our YouTube channel.
Hello, my name is Catherine, and I’m currently a software engineer student at the University of Waterloo. I applied for the Red Education Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship because I wants to advance my career in cybersecurity, where certifications are a good indicator of career expertise.
I found the application process at education to be very simple and straightforward, and I found my application to be well representative of my skills and passions. I was extremely excited to hear that I was a recipient of this fellowship, because for university students, affording certification training can be very difficult.
I attended the Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator training (CCSA), and it was extremely helpful for me, because the instructor paced his lessons very well, stopping for questions along the way, intuitively guiding us through labs and highlighting potential exam questions.
Even with a lot less prior knowledge than my fellow trainees, I was able to follow along and learn a lot along the way. I also found a group of people in my training group to be extremely supportive and engaged. These conversations definitely helped lessen the virtual disconnect remote classes often have and fostered a warm learning environment.
I think this training will prove useful to my cybersecurity career in terms of the technical skills I learned in the training, but also learning about different careers and that the certification was relevant to even within cybersecurity.
I am now confident that I can do well writing the cybersecurity certification exam, and also confident in my place in cyber security, since I learned a lot from the training experience.
