As the world of business gets more and more digitized, the need for cyber security engineers grows by the day. The Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance estimates the cost of cybercrime to be around $45 billion per year. Cyber security engineers work to protect a company from expensive threats. What Cyber Security Engineers Do Cyber security analysts help keep organizations safe from a wide range of online threats. They also protect the networking systems that companies depend on. These systems may be simple and kept mostly in-house, but they often involve connecting to an external or wide area network (WAN). Let’s also not forget virtual systems and networks that allow employees to gain access to company data while working remotely. Even though external connections may invite more threats, an element of risk is always there. The Absolute Beginners Guide to Cyber Security 2024 – Part 1 Last Updated February 2024 56 lectures Beginner Level 4.6 (41,922) Learn Cyber Security concepts such as hacking, malware, firewalls, worms, phishing, encryption, biometrics, BYOD & more | By Alexander Oni Explore Course This is where a cybersecurity professional plays a key role. Much of their job description involves performing assessments and penetration testing to limit and control the risk of cybercriminals penetrating the network. A security professional is also a main element of the overall technology team. Specifically, they use security technology to limit threats, which frees up the IT team to focus on creating secure network solutions instead of tracking down security issues. Further, a cybersecurity professional is often responsible for engineering trusted systems into secure systems. This usually involves a complete review of a company’s networking systems to transition them from trust-based to trustless. To accomplish this, the engineer performs a full audit, intrusion analysis, and assessment of employees’ individual access rights. On the other hand, if adequate trustless security is already in place, a cybersecurity engineer may focus more on developing and implementing cybersecurity solutions. These may fit the existing security architecture or require new hardware and software to protect from cyber attacks. How Cyber Security Supports the Modern Business Landscape The more vital elements of business shift from basic internal networks to cloud computing, the more exposure critical systems have to threats. A cyber security engineer has the skills to limit or eliminate these threats. This way, the company can carry on business without investing extra resources in recovering from attacks. Because they fulfill this crucial role, cyber security engineers are essential to the survival of modern businesses. When a security engineer has earned the necessary credentials, they can apply their skills to a wide range of businesses. This includes finance, wholesale, retail, education, manufacturing, and more.
When it comes to learning a new skill, a lot of questions come to mind. How long will it take? Am I smart enough? Do I have the time? This is all perfectly natural; it happens to everyone. It’s totally normal to want answers to these questions, and it’s very human to analyze whether we’d be able to chisel out time from our already busy schedules. When it comes to learning Python, like all skills, it can be quite hard to determine how long it takes to learn it. Lots of factors come into play, such as how good you want to become, how much time you can commit, your previous experience with similar topics, and so on. We can see quite a bit of variety in the timescales proposed by online experts as well. Here are some estimated timescales I’ve found proposed on the internet: Author Estimated Timescale Data Quest 5 hours per week for 1 month Meenakshi Agarwal via Medium.com 6-8 weeks Jan Bask Training 60 hours Programming Hero 2.5 months Code Career Genius 30 days Tech Tricks World 1 month; 3-5 hours per day The Python Bible™ | Everything You Need to Program in Python Last Updated April 2021 74 lectures Beginner Level 4.6 (51,052) Build 11 Projects and go from Beginner to Pro in Python with the World’s Most Fun Project-Based Python Course! | By Ziyad Yehia, Internet of Things Academy Explore Course Although there is quite a bit of variety, we can see that the estimates seem to hover around one to two months or four to eight weeks. Based on this, I’d say a reasonable timescale probably lies somewhere in the middle (around six weeks). Six weeks is a good compromise between asking too much of your schedule and avoids overpromising rapid improvement. So, instead of us trying to figure out exactly how long it takes to learn Python, let me share a plan that I have designed to help you learn Python in six weeks. Let’s take a look. How to learn Python in six weeks Imagine learning to drive. Do you think you could learn to drive a car without knowing the difference between the accelerator and the brakes? How about knowing what red means at a traffic light, or which side of the road to drive on? Similarly, mastering Python depends very heavily on you having a solid understanding of the basics. In fact, without them, you don’t have anything. Here is a list of the fundamental building blocks of Python programming. If you know these topics, then you can say you know how to program in Python: Variables Numbers and arithmetic operations Strings and string manipulations Logic and Conditional Flow Data structures (lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries) Loops (‘for’ loops, and ‘while’ loops) Functions Object-Oriented Programming (Classes and Objects) If the above list looks a bit overwhelming, don’t worry. Allow me to illustrate a couple of these topics to show you just how simple learning Python really is. Let me quickly demonstrate the first two topics: variables and arithmetic operations. Suppose you wanted to add two numbers. Maybe you were coding a checkout software and needed to add together a price and 20% VAT to calculate the final cost of an item. Let’s see how we’d do it in Python: price = 15 tax = 0.2 * price total = price + tax print(total) Output: 18 First, we created a variable called “price” and used it to store the price of an item, which in this case was $15. Then, we calculated the VAT due on the item by calculating 20% of the price. Next, we added these two values together, just like we would on a calculator, and saved the answer in a variable called “total.” Finally, we used Python’s print function to print the total cost to the screen, which was $18. Just like that, we have written a Python script that can calculate prices for customers. Easy, right?
A few years ago, the creation of programs and applications was aimed at only a few people with specialized knowledge. Lately, though, programming for beginners has been possible, thanks to software that has been developed, such as Scratch. In this article, you will see how to create your own game in an easy and fun way. Why start Scratch Coding? The rate at which jobs in the IT sector are growing is almost twice as high as in other industries, and this is only an indication of work in future new technologies. Researchers estimate that “the digital economy is worth $11.5 trillion globally, equivalent to 15.5 percent of global GDP and has grown two and a half times faster than global GDP over the past 15 years.” In a few years, programming knowledge will be fully integrated into educational programs for every age. Using coding concepts, it’s possible to design projects that utilize very similar guidelines and rubrics for a digital project, thereby giving students the opportunity to learn about their topic and sharpen their coding skills at the same time. Future human resources, generations Y and Z, will have at their core the digital skills needed to program. Scratch Programming – Build 14 Games in Scratch 3.0 Bootcamp Build 14 + 1 Games in Scratch 3.0 including Arkanoid, Snake, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, a Racing Game & Elsa from Frozen! | By Dr. Chris Mall • 35,000+ Students Worldwide, Mall Academy Explore Course Following are some of the top reasons to begin learning how to program: You will speak the “language” of the future, and you will have more options for access to the labor market. With programming knowledge, you will have a competitive advantage over other candidates for the same jobs. Programming does exactly what Steve Jobs was saying — it helps you think — so it allows you to further develop skills like critical thinking and the ability to solve complex problems. It helps you develop your creativity and deal with innovative projects by having access to technologically advanced tools and methods when working for any employer in the global market. You will be able to deal in almost any industry or even combine different areas of work applications. Sectors such as economics, medicine, content creation, etc., will have an elementary knowledge of code and programming as a prerequisite. It will help you make everyone’s life and work easier! Programming finds infinite applications in our everyday life because everything is based on code (e.g., GPS while driving, smartphones, weather applications, shopping, etc.) Let’s start coding by creating a video game in Scratch 3.0! But, first… Hey, what is Scratch 3.0? Scratch is a programming language created in 2007 by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group department of the University of Massachusetts MIT. It is mainly used in education so children can learn programming concepts and start creating with block based coding and get used to designing algorithms and real coding. Scratch’s environment makes programming for beginners very easy, especially for children. They can create games and animations by moving (drag & drop) commands, which appear as detachable blocks, actually it is block based coding . A vital element is the large community that supports Scratch, as well as the fact that everyone has the ability to share their own projects on the official website. So the programming for beginners becomes even easier since there is mutual user support. So far, over 14 million games, animations and music creations have been uploaded to Scratch’s platform. Let’s start creating the great game Arkanoid!
