From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

The biggest challenges

From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

The biggest challenges

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- What will be the biggest challenges in your new career? I could say the people you have to assist on a daily basis, but for now let's just stick to the technology you need to manage. There are lots of different devices, and software to work with. On the hardware side, you may work on switches, routers, firewalls, wifi and servers. There are also many custom devices you'll find in certain vertical markets. A vertical market is an area in which your organization specializes. It could be medical, financial, education, government and others. One challenge you'll have will be to understand laws of the country you're in such as privacy rules, and client protection. What if a laptop gets stolen, who do you need to notify? In my area by law, we have to notify anyone whose data is on that device. I've seen at least one company go out of business due to losing an unencrypted hard drive with clients' data on it. After notifying the clients, most of them left for other vendors. Operating systems and software will also be a challenge. They'll need to be updated with security and feature updates on a regular basis, but in a way that won't impact production more than it has to. You'll need to plan time to go to vendor seminars in-person or online. This can be difficult to schedule when you have daily responsibilities, but it will need to be a priority. Many small and medium-sized companies are moving completely to the cloud while larger organizations are mainly staying on-premises with some cloud resources due to cost. If you are part of a team that plans to move to the cloud, when you become a CIS admin, it will be important for you to become educated on the areas you'll need to know. Currently, colleges and universities have mainly high-level views of cloud infrastructure courses available. So you'll need to get educated by the vendor resources for now. The biggest challenge you'll likely have will be security. Hardware and software are mature enough to stay online and functional almost all the time. But hackers are always trying to stay a step ahead of any security defenses your software may have. They'll attack from the outside using open vulnerable doorways we call ports on a firewall. They'll also use tactics to get in on the inside using something we call phishing attacks that try to get a user to click on a link in an email or advertisement. A hacker can bring down a multi-billion dollar company if they get control of key functions of an organization using ransomware or other tactics. You'll need to stay on top of patches, and vulnerabilities, as well as read up on the latest way hackers gain access to systems. In larger companies, you may be a part of a security team that goes through scenarios on what to do, and in what order during different types of attacks. No matter what devices you manage as a CIS admin, security will always be a part of it. Be vigilant and ready to take on security issues, and other challenges as they arise.

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