Cybersecurity Starts Below the Surface: Why Fundamentals Matter
Published Nov. 11, 2025, 3:41 p.m. by rye
Many first- and second-year college students who want to get into cybersecurity are motivated by something very real: they want a career that improves their economic situation. I hear this over and over, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Wanting to lift yourself, your family, and even your community is a valid and respectable reason to pursue technical work. When people participate more fully in society, society improves.
But that’s _not_ what this discussion is about.
This discussion is about a missing foundation: the basic knowledge of how computer systems actually work. Too many students jump straight into “cyber” without understanding files, directories, how operating systems organize data, or what’s happening underneath the abstractions.
At the bottom of the stack, machine code is doing the real work. We don’t write machine code directly because it’s difficult and easy to get wrong. Compilers and interpreters exist to translate human-readable languages into something the CPU understands. Many languages help us work at a higher level—Python is a great example. Python lets you declare what you want the computer to do without needing to understand every system call happening behind the scenes.
Still, there are a few foundational tools and concepts you must understand:
- **The shell (e.g., Bash — “Bourne Again SHell”)**
This is your interface to the operating system. It lets you navigate, inspect, and control the system directly.
- **Files and directories**
A computer stores data in directories (folders) and files. You can move through these directories, and the amount of access you have depends on your permissions or privileges.
- **The `cd` command (“change directory”)**
This is how you navigate the file system.
Example:
`cd /var/something/subfolder/file.ext`
The path syntax goes from broad to narrow—starting at the top of the directory tree and ending at the specific file or script you want the system to operate on.
Understanding these fundamentals isn’t optional. It’s the groundwork that makes everything else in cybersecurity make sense.
There is an excellent resource that I invite you to read here
https://software-carpentry.org/lessons/
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