The Cyber NOW Education Blog

With over a decade of experience specializing in Security Operations Centers (SOC), Tyler Wall enjoys teaching and mentoring new cybersecurity talent. He has obtained a Master of Science in Cybersecurity from Purdue University and certifications including the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Cloud Certificate of Security Knowledge (CCSK), Certified Forensic Security Responder (CSFR), Security+, Network+, and many others. He is the author of the popular book Jump-start Your SOC Analyst Career and Udemy course Cybersecurity: Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst NOW!

Tyler lives in Cumming, Georgia and enjoys spending time with his wife and son (5) above all other things. Other than family and technology, he also enjoys history, science, and the arts. He treasures his lifetime subscription to National Geographic given to him in a beautifully framed certificate by his grandfather when he was born 36 some odd years ago. His grandfather was a West Point graduate and retired from the Army as a Colonel to become a history teacher. His grandmother was a University of Georgia graduate in a time it was rare for women to be educated or have careers, who spent her career teaching. His mom was also a University of Georgia graduate and teacher, Kindergarten teacher. Retired now but enjoys visiting her Grandson's school and volunteering to be a guest reader to his and other Kindergarten classes at the school.


Some of Tyler's other leisure magazine readings include subscriptions to Astronomy, QST, Knights Templar, and Masonic Messenger. He is a Master Mason in good standing and has continued his masonic education all the way through the York Rite: Royal Arch, Cryptic Masons, and up to the terminal Knights Templar degree.

He has a long-time fascination with Kryptos, the sculpture at the CIA HQ, and is part of a community that is working on deciphering the unsolvable puzzle. He works on the riddles that the ciphertext decodes to. In other words, he tries to figure out what the english means when gibberish is translated and he's made significant progress. It has spawned hobbies with ham radio and egyptology that continue to today. My QRZed is good: KO4UUT.

Speaking of hobbies, art and design is something he finds himself doing from time to time. He owns a Bambu 3D printer and often designs functional models in Fusion360 and prints them out. He also likes to create art therapeutically. He is much better at art appreciation than creation, but that doesn't stop him from trying to create something rudimentary to pass off to a professional to design. All of the images found in his course were created by him and refined by a graphic designer.

He owns his own library and collects rare books. Most collectables are autographed biographies of people he identifies with that have had similar struggles in life. He also has a couple of very old first editions and autographed books from his friends who are also authors. He takes good care of plants on his bookshelf that are working hard to collect the dust. Snake plant, peace lilly, and pothos to be exact. There are also some books on his bookshelf that get used frequently, often having two copies, one to collect and one to read. His favorite book of all time, is Treasures of World History: The Story of Civilization Told Through Its 50 Most Important Documents. Its not a popular book, and it seems to be a mystery how he even ended up with it. His wife bought it for his birthday, and doesn't remember where or how she got it. It was an insignificant last minute present she picked up to add to the rest of his gifts. Tyler is most interested in what store liked this book so much that they kept it in stock, because he likes them. He's had it for a couple of years and still learning interesting things that makes him question the integrity of history, science, technology, religion and many other subjects. Written by a famous journalist couple who are familiar with tall tales. He could write for a long time about this book. In fact, Tyler could write a long time on just about anything. What he enjoys most about his career is being able to relate and talk to people about things he knows stuff about. Being not a fan of discussing religion and politics, in fact very much opposed to the subjects, he sometimes has trouble having normal everyday conversations. He doesn't talk much usually, and prefers to read and write, but theres something about the collaboration of working together in cybersecurity that makes him pipe up. He has an interest in creating a course on cracking history's mysteries as a common facebook post of his would regard disappointing realities of stories we thought we're so familiar with. 

He is the founder of Cyber NOW Education, started because he was so sick of for-profit degree mills taking advantage of students and leaving them with skills that aren't applicable to finding entry level work. He spent a lot time interviewing these people who are $50,000 in debt and a fresh piece of paper and he had to tell them they weren't qualified for basic cybersecurity work.