Whenever I was in high school my dad suggested that I try this program called Cyberstart America. This changed the course of my future, It introduced me to the world of cybersecurity and started a new fire in me.
Cyberstart America started easy with simple things like white text on a white background. It then progressed through different challenges such as SQL injection, encryption, decryption, and and acted essentially like a "wargame" like over the wire.
This taught me the very fundamentals of how computers work. It taught me how to set up a virtual machine and dip my toes into Linux.
They have you start with a specialized custom Linux distro with cybersecurity tools built in, kind of like Kali but with training wheels.
The most important thing that Cyberstart America taught me was problem solving skills. It taught me how to properly troubleshoot issues and how to google the issues and actually resolve the issues.
Cyberstart America forever changed my career path and I will forever be grateful for that.
