Spreading the infosec love: Teaching & making money doing it

Do you have some free time and want to make some extra money? Well, if you have cybersecurity skills, there are great opportunities for you.

People with information security and cybersecurity skills are in demand, but did you know in the past year the number of cybersecurity job postings has jumped 91%?! So how can you take advantage of this need without leaving your current job or, in some cases, without even applying for a new one?

Start teaching.

Teaching security & making money doing it

Currently, security is one of the world’s fastest moving industries. Even if people graduated with an information technology or information security degree, the learning isn’t over. In fact, at the speed things are moving the learning never stops; so if you are an expert in certain areas of security, your knowledge is in high demand.

One of our favorite examples of someone who raked in the cash by sharing his security knowledge is Rick Walter. Walter made videos of himself explaining how Apple’s Swift worked. After teaming up with Udemy and offering a one-day free trial of the videos, he ended up making a total of $180,000 from those videos—even after Udemy’s cut.

4 ideas for making money teaching security skills

1. Partner with a credible company

If you are looking to follow in Rick Walter’s footsteps and offer a video series, partner with a company that has a good reputation. Yes, these companies will take a percentage of the money you make, but you will sell more videos with the support of a reputable company than you would on your own.

2. Write a book

If you are good with words, write a book about your security knowledge. While the industry usually changes faster than you can write and publish a book, there are a couple options to make this work. First, you could write about general skills necessary to make it in the security world. This means writing about leadership, project management, prioritization and interdepartmental communication versus writing about the details of software or technology. If you do want to write about the technical details, partner with a series of books that knows how to publish quickly—like a For Dummies or For Idiots book.

3. Publish a whitepaper

Don’t have the patience or enough content to fill a book? Write a white paper or eBook. These are shorter and there doesn’t have to be any printing or publishing issues; you choose how complex you want the download process to be. You can be a freelance technical writer and thus write the papers for other companies, for yourself, or it might be possible to make an agreement with your current company to publish the report and provide a portion of the sales as bonus or additional pay increase to you.

4. Become an adjunct teacher

Colleges and universities are quickly realizing the importance of offering classes taught by adjunct professors—or non-staff professors who have real world experience versus who have been teaching their whole lives. Usually adjunct professors just teach one or two classes a semester in their area of expertise and are retired or have a day job.

If one of these opportunities speaks to you and your interests, get out there and start teaching. If you are not called to teach, share this article with someone you know who would be great at it. Whatever path you choose, just spread the love for security!