Do you Need to be Great at Math to Start a Career In Cybersecurity?

Do you really need to be great at Math to have a career in CyberSecurity? Find out more in this YouTube video from CyberSecurity Engineer - Grant Collins.

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00:00 all right so do you know how to solve 00:02 this complex equation right here because 00:04 i surely do not know 00:06 what the heck is in front of me and 00:09 that's the topic of today's video 00:13 [Music] 00:14 all right so do you need math in cyber 00:17 security no you don't need it i will be 00:19 talking about why you don't need it when 00:21 you may need it and 00:23 well my overall synopsis of if you need 00:26 math in cyber security 00:31 all right so from the industry 00:32 perspective math isn't necessarily 00:35 something you need to know the ins and 00:37 outs of 00:38 right it's more so hands-on practical 00:41 application of technologies and tools 00:43 and concepts and all were of these words 00:46 but you get what i'm saying you really 00:48 don't need math in industry all right so 00:51 i went on indeed and as you can see if 00:54 we take a look at the job 00:55 responsibilities 00:57 well the majority are not going to have 00:59 anything to do related or with math at 01:02 all in terms of getting into the field 01:05 of cyber you really don't need it you 01:07 know you can take a look at any of job 01:09 description 01:10 and a lot of them are not asking for 01:12 well cyber security math so there is at 01:15 times areas where actually you may need 01:17 to know math and let me go ahead and 01:19 elaborate just a little bit more on what 01:21 i mean there 01:24 when i was a freshman entering into 01:26 university and cyber security there were 01:29 a few classes i had to take before 01:32 entering into my cybersecurity major 01:34 classes and those included math classes 01:38 so in this case there are areas where 01:41 you may need to have 01:43 some level of understanding with math 01:46 and that includes if you're going to go 01:47 out and get a university degree 01:50 in cybersecurity typically a bachelor's 01:52 of science they're going to require you 01:54 to take 01:55 maybe two three four classes 01:58 of math in order to get into you know 02:00 the cybersecurity program it's all just 02:02 basically a filtering system in my 02:04 opinion trying to 02:06 weed out students because it really 02:08 isn't necessary once you enter into the 02:11 industry now there is one particular 02:13 area in cyber security where you would 02:16 need to have a strong foundation and 02:18 understanding 02:19 of math and that is mathematical 02:22 cryptography so cryptography ultimately 02:24 comes down to sending and receiving 02:27 messages securely to you know authorized 02:31 parties in a very basic sense but 02:33 mathematical cryptography has 02:36 well let's just say at a high level 02:38 a lot of 02:40 working components 02:41 that you have to be mindful of when 02:44 creating a secure messaging system there 02:46 is a lot of 02:48 complex math and probability that goes 02:51 into it if you want to be a 02:53 cryptographer maybe work for a 02:56 government agency such as the nsa in the 02:59 united states or you want to be some 03:01 sort of cyber security researcher who 03:03 either is trying to 03:05 crack the algorithms crypto analysis or 03:08 you're trying to develop more secure 03:10 algorithms 03:11 that's an area of math where you would 03:14 need to know and be familiar with 03:17 in cyber security but 03:19 ultimately if you don't want to do that 03:21 you really don't need to know the ins 03:23 and outs of cryptography you just need 03:25 to know the secure algorithms to use one 03:28 other level of math you may need to know 03:31 is if you're going to get into the 03:32 programming side of the security 03:34 industry whether that's creating cyber 03:36 security software or you're being a 03:40 secure software developer looking to 03:42 implement more secure code you may need 03:45 to know the foundations of building an 03:48 algorithm for an example which i don't 03:50 even know how to do myself so that is 03:53 something you may need to keep in mind 03:54 if you want to be 03:56 a programmer 03:57 that would be an area where you may need 03:59 to know 04:00 some level of math all right so it's 04:03 been a short video once again i wanted 04:06 to do an update on this video i created 04:08 this video three years ago and i just 04:10 thought i would go ahead and 04:12 provide a quick update on my thoughts 04:15 with cyber security and math you don't 04:17 need it 04:18 really but sorta hopefully this video 04:21 has been somewhat useful in your process 04:24 of getting into cyber security and yeah 04:27 until the next one have a good day