There are times when calling time on a project is the right thing.

I started my MSc with Edinburgh Napier in 2018. Having started working at Mimecast in 2017 I was keen to explore cybersecurity as a career in a deeper way than building secure products. Sure, whatever role you’re in at Mimecast will have security at its paramount. You get exposed to threat modelling, secure coding, malware analysis, cloud security and that’s just to keep the lights on! But I wanted to go much deeper and work In the security team.

I will say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning at Edinburgh Napier and the course sparked my imagination for sure. The modules were engaging, the professors and lecturers are awesome with a huge enthusiasm for their subjects and the flexibility of distance learning is also a bonus. Weirdly I’ve still never been to Edinburgh!

I was meant to have completed this MSc by October 2020. Sadly a global pandemic meant a huge ramp up at work, as more people worked from home, more people had more emails that needed securing. This sadly left little time to commit to some later modules (which I scored low on) and also zero time to commit to a dissertation. I deferred the dissertation twice hoping things would die down. They did, only that I had some huge personal matters I had to deal with for the past few months. I still don’t feel ready to do the dissertation, and while the kind teaching staff offered to allow me to defer again, I don’t think it’s fair on other students that I keep deferring it.

I cannot fault the Edinburgh Napier staff who have said to get in touch if I want to finish later down the line, or perhaps pick another qualification later. They have been hugely supportive in what has been a very tough year.

So instead of the MSc that I hoped for, I instead have been awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Security and Digital Forensics. You know what, I’m extremely happy with it too. It is the result of a lot of hard work, stress and tears and I’m really happy to accept it. I hope this isn’t the end of my academic studies indefinitely, just perhaps the end for now. A small breather till things have sorted out again.