Certifications serve great purpose in the world of cybersecurity and in CTI. They do an excellent job at showcasing your knowledge of key principles. If an employer needs to see real-world application of those principles, and they may, I HIGHLY recommend starting a Medium blog about CTI. Create a post about what you’re learning. Create another post about the Diamond Model. Create another post detailing how you would map a specific intrusion to the Diamond Model. Talk about if it matches a big time company’s mapping. If it doesn’t, discuss why that may be (access to paid feeds, industry knowledge, trust groups, etc.) and what you’ve learned from the experience. Make sure you add your recommendations at the end. How would an enterprise company prevent that intrusion? How would a start up? Would this intrusion matter to macOS users? Would it matter to gov/telecom/financial/SaaS… you probably get it by now.

Lastly, below are a lot of CTI certs. If you’re just starting your cybersecurity journey, I would NOT recommend these. Hit me up if that’s you and you’re looking for a little bit more tailored advice!