I'm a final-year Computer Science student aiming for a SOC Analyst or Network Security Engineer role after graduation, and I'm logging the process of actually getting there. I missed posting yesterday, so this entry covers two days at once.
20-07-2026
What I Did
Completed Module 1: Introduction to Cyber Security on TryHackMe's Pre Security path — three rooms: Offensive Security Intro, Defensive Security Intro, and Careers in Cyber.
What I Learned
This is the first time I've studied security in a structured way rather than picking things up in scattered pieces, and I wasn't sure how it would go. What made it click was how each room pairs theory with an actual hands-on lab, so a concept doesn't stay abstract for long. Offensive Security Intro, for instance, has you find a hidden page on a practice banking site yourself instead of just reading a definition of ethical hacking. By the end of the module, I'd also turned what I'd learned into a project of my own — a structured set of study notes, built room by room as I go.
Problems and How I Solved Them
Nothing major tripped me up. This is the first module of a beginner path, so it's built to ease you in rather than overwhelm you. If there was a challenge at all, it was just the general uncertainty of starting something new — and having a lab right after the theory cut a lot of that down.
21-07-2026
What I Did
Moved into Module 2: Computer Fundamentals and completed three rooms — Inside a Computer System, Computer Types, and Client-Server Basics. Virtualisation Basics is next, still in progress.
What I Learned
What actually clicked today was realizing how much happens the instant you press a computer's power button. It's not one action, it's a short chain of events: the firmware starts, POST runs, a boot device gets selected, and only then does the bootloader take over. Something as simple as turning a computer on suddenly felt a lot less simple.
The other big piece was HTTP(S). I learned it's technically a stateless protocol — it doesn't remember anything between requests — but modern applications work around that by attaching a cookie or token to each request instead. I went through all nine HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, TRACE, CONNECT) and took a proper deep dive into GET specifically, inspecting a real webpage's request to see its scheme, host, filename, address, and status for myself. On the response side, I learned it splits into two parts: a response header (metadata) and a response body (the actual content).
The restaurant analogy from Client-Server Basics tied a lot of this together — the client is you placing an order, the protocol is the friend who knows how to phrase it correctly, the server is the kitchen preparing it, ports are separate doors for separate services, and DNS is what turns a name into an actual address in the first place.
Problems and How I Solved Them
The one thing that threw me off was opening the Network tab in browser dev tools for the first time. There's a lot more going on there than the single, clean request example from the theory made it look like. I didn't fully untangle it today, but having just learned what a request's scheme, host, and status are supposed to mean gives me an actual reference point for next time I open it.
Visuals
How Module 1 broke down into its three rooms:
What happens when you press the power button:
How an HTTP request and response actually move between client and server:
What's Next
Finishing Virtualisation Basics, then Cloud Computing Fundamentals to close out Module 2. The Network tab is on my list to revisit once I'm further into the networking-focused rooms later in the path.
Thanks for reading!
If you're also learning cybersecurity, I'd love to hear about your journey or any suggestions in the comments.
Follow along for future entries in the Cyber Chronicles series.
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