Hello everyone,

I was just curious about which degrees pen-testers out there have. I'm currently a CS student but thinking of changing the major into CIS since in the catalog it has more Computer courses and less maths. In my CS catalog, I only have like 4 Courses in JAVA programming and 2 in Assembly, while the rest is all maths. While the CIS has Network Administration, UNIX and Shell coding, UNIX administration, database System Concepts that's of course plus the 4 JAVA courses and the 2 in Assembly. I personally, find the CIS really closer into what I would like to do as a career unlike CS which is about programming and software development which is not really that interesting to me.

I've been advised to get like a Bachelor's in CS and a Master's in Computer forensics. Others said that I can just get a Bachelor's in CS and learn networking and pen-testing by my own since the pen-testing field doesn't really care about degrees. I just want to your opinions about this.

I think it depends on you and your knowledge.

I have a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering but I'm working as security engineer, and I think my degree were not so useful...

By the way, looking at your catalog, i think CIS would be better.. but many pentesters starts as developer... Honestly I don't like BS in CS and MS in Computer Forensics. It's possible to have a BS in CS and a MS in CIS ?

Otherwise, I agree with who said that this field doesn't really care about your degree..

I do also think CIS is much better, but I just want to be sure. I don't really have so much interest in developing, but that doesn't mean I hate it either. The thing is, I just want a BS degree, going for a MS is pretty inconvenient in my situation and also very costly. But, if it's the only way, I guess I don't have a choice do I?

That can be true although, if I get a degree in it, I do learn it in college don't I? Because if I didn't get the degree most likely I'll just take courses that I find useful. I really don't know, I've asked about this many times but seems like not too many pentesters are around or interested to reply.