MoD Resettlement, from Weapons Engineer to Cyber Security Consultant

Andy Howell spent 20 years in the Royal Navy as a Weapons Engineer and as he approached his forties, he decided that a new career challenge was needed – something different as a second career using his MoD Resettlement. For that, Andy decided to go into Cyber Security and these days, he’s a Principal Cyber Security Consultant for BMT Ltd.

After making his decision, Andy’s first step was to undertake the relevant training he did during his MoD resettlement in his final year in the Royal Navy, using Individual Resettlement Training Costs (IRTC) funding. This enabled him to access the necessary foundation training with us at BIT Training back in 2016, which included the all-important CompTIA Network+ and CompTIA Security+, and he also passed the CISSP exam.

A year later, he left the Royal Navy, and after two years with Babcock, he joined BMT in 2019, and he’s not looked back since. He even continued his training in 2020 by undertaking CompTIA Pentest+, which again, he did with us at BIT Training.

BMT is a perfect match for Andy’s skillset as they’re a maritime-orientated high-end design and technical consulting firm driven by a passion for complex, real-world problems. They deliver design, engineering and consulting excellence in a world of ever-increasing change and have over 1,200 individual professionals across more than 27 offices in 25 different countries.

At BIT Training, we have 19 years of experience delivering courses for former and current military personnel, preparing them for careers in the tech industry as part of their MoD Resettlement. Covering IT, Cyber and Network Infrastructure, our courses allow people like Andy to embark on new careers in a sector that is often perfectly suited to follow on from life in the Armed Forces.

Commenting on this, Andy Howell said: “The career transition from the forces isn’t always an easy one, but the key to it is understanding what your transferrable skills are. For me, the move into Cyber Security made perfect sense for three reasons. Firstly, service leavers generally have a work ethic and ethos that is very compatible with the Cyber Security industry. Secondly, I already had an established level of security clearance. And thirdly, with a Weapon Engineering background, the transition into Cyber Security made good use of my existing technical skills and experience.  It’s also advantageous if you can land a role with a ‘forces friendly’ company like BMT.”

If you would like to talk to BIT Training about how we can help train people for a better, more cyber secure future, then please take a look at our MoD Resettlement courses here .