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CTN Career Guide

Navy

CTN: Cryptologic Technician (Networks)

Career transition guide for Navy Cryptologic Technician (Networks) (CTN)

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Civilian Career Pathways

Top civilian roles for CTN veterans, with average salary and market demand data.

Cybersecurity Analyst

$105K
High matchVery high demand

Skills to develop:

CEHCloud security

Penetration Tester

$115K
High matchGrowing demand

Skills to develop:

OSCPBug bounty experience

Security Engineer

$125K
Good matchVery high demand

Skills to develop:

Cloud securityDevSecOps

SOC Analyst

$85K
High matchVery high demand

Skills to develop:

SIEM platforms

Salary estimates from VWC career data

Hidden Strengths

Cognitive skills your CTN training built — and where they transfer.

Adversarial Thinking

Conducting offensive and defensive cyber operations against sophisticated adversaries, understanding attack vectors and exploitation techniques

Thinking like an attacker to build better defenses — the highest-demand skill in cybersecurity, red teaming, and security research

Pattern Recognition

Analyzing network traffic, malware behavior, and intrusion indicators to identify advanced persistent threats across massive data volumes

Finding needles in haystacks of data — applicable to threat hunting, anomaly detection, data science, and financial fraud analysis

System Modeling

Mapping target network architectures, understanding protocol interactions, and modeling system dependencies for exploitation and defense

Reverse-engineering complex systems — the skill behind security research, systems architecture, and technical due diligence

After-Action Analysis

Conducting post-operation analysis of cyber engagements to document techniques, evaluate effectiveness, and improve future operations

Structured analysis of outcomes — transfers to incident response reporting, security audit findings, and penetration test documentation

Non-Obvious Career Matches

Security Researcher

SOC 15-1212

You've been finding and exploiting vulnerabilities at the nation-state level. Bug bounty programs and security research firms pay extremely well for exactly this skill set — with less operational security overhead.

Data Engineer

SOC 15-1252

You've processed massive volumes of network data, built queries to find specific patterns, and automated data pipelines. Data engineering uses the same skills — just pointed at business data instead of network traffic.

Technical Sales Engineer (Cybersecurity)

SOC 15-1232

You understand both the offensive and defensive sides of cybersecurity at a depth that most sales engineers never reach. That technical credibility, combined with briefing experience, makes you extremely effective in pre-sales.

Training & Education Equivalencies

CTN A School, Joint Cyber Analysis Course (JCAC), Corry Station, Pensacola, FL

1,320 training hours26 weeksUp to 21 semester hours recommended

Topics Covered

  • •Computer network operations
  • •Digital forensics
  • •Offensive and defensive cyber operations
  • •Network exploitation techniques
  • •Programming and scripting (Python, Bash)
  • •Operating system internals (Linux, Windows)
  • •Packet analysis and network protocols

Certification Pathways

Ready to Certify

CompTIA Security+

Partial Coverage

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)70% covered

Web application hacking, social engineering tools, and cloud security testing

CISSP40% covered

Security architecture, software development security, and asset security domains

Recommended Next Certifications

CEHGIAC certificationsOSCP

Technical Systems Translation

Military systems you've used and their civilian equivalents for your resume.

Military SystemCivilian Equivalent
NSA CNO (Computer Network Operations) ToolsPenetration testing and network security tools (Metasploit, Burp Suite, Wireshark)
SIGINT Analysis PlatformsNetwork traffic analysis and intrusion detection systems (Splunk, ELK Stack)
Linux / Unix Administration (RHEL, CentOS)Linux/Unix systems administration and shell scripting
IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems)Network security monitoring (Snort, Suricata, Palo Alto, CrowdStrike)
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)SIEM platforms (Splunk, IBM QRadar, ArcSight)
JWICS / SIPRNET WorkstationsClassified and secured network infrastructure administration

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