When thinking about Python, what do you think of?
Do you think about the animal? Well, I think about an amazing programming language that is really versatile in what it can do.
I think about Python not only as a scripting language but even as a toolkit for a cybersecurity professional.
Programming
If this is your first language you are learning, I would call you lucky as this is a really simple language to learn, just like the game Baduk, but can turn really complicated really fast.
Why I call it simple is because unlike other languages (C, Java, JavaScript, Bash), you don't have to fight syntax. In comparison, JavaScript and Bash are more in the medium scale, while C and Java are heavy syntax.
I also believe that when reading Python it is much cleaner to write, read, and understand, both as the developer writing it and future developers who will need to understand what was written.
Scripting
How I mainly use Python is in this format currently.
I have been helping my team create scripts to do mundane tasks from taking 30 min or more to mere seconds.
Like I stated above, a Bash script, though more in the medium scale, could take nearly 100 lines to execute something that could be about 20 lines in Python. However, it is still possible, like in my case, where I am writing 100+ lines of code to execute something mainly because I am still trying to think in the mindset of a programmer and write clean code.
It is also a great tool to use because of the vast amount of libraries that make almost any task possible. I frequently use: NumPy, Pandas, datetime, boto3.
Cybersecurity
I haven't really used Python in this aspect of my career yet. There are many pre-written codes available through the cybersecurity community to analyze any cybersecurity issues you are dealing with if it is too challenging to write your own for the first time.
Since I have been really interested in cloud security lately, I've been working on a program that does a lot of security checks within AWS to validate that my AWS account is NIST and ISO compliant.
Once I feel I have enough completed, I will create a different blog post explaining how it works and how it complies with both NIST, ISO, and OWASP top 10 compliant.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash