SOC L1 Roadmap: Land Your First Cyber Job

Everything you need to land your first SOC Analyst role, structured, practical, and built around free resources.

This is not a theoretical guide. It is a 19-section career roadmap built for people who want to get hired as an SOC Analyst Level 1, with or without a degree or prior professional experience.

What is inside:

• Core Technical Skills breakdown (Windows, Linux, SIEM, Networking, Threat Intel).
• Certification priority guide (Security+, CySA+, Splunk, Azure).
• Step-by-step Home Lab setup using free tools (ELK, Splunk, VirtualBox).
• Full 6-Month Career Launch Timeline with monthly deliverables.
• 50+ curated free tools, platforms, and GitHub repos used by real analysts.
• Windows Event ID Cheat Sheet covering the critical IDs every L1 must know.
• Detection Engineering basics, write your first Sigma rule.
• MITRE ATT&CK framework deep dive with tactic, technique, and detection mapping.
• Threat Hunting guide written for beginners.
• Cloud security monitoring covering AWS and Azure log sources.
• Interview prep with common questions and strong answer frameworks.
• Portfolio project ideas that actually get you interviews.
• Pre-interview readiness checklist.
• Quick Reference glossary covering IOC, TTP, SOAR, EDR, MTTD, and more.