A home Cyber Lab is a good place to start learning Cyber Security on your own.
There are hundreds of resources to be found on the web and youtube about setting up basic / starter home cyber security labs. Below are some ideas for getting a very basic starter lab going.
- Find older computer equipment lying around.
If you know a family member who has an older PC or laptop that they are no longer using, you might be able to re-purpose the equipment for a home lab. However, make sure that you wipe out the old user information from the computer. - Gather the Operating Systems you plan to use.
Two of the most common OS’s are Ubuntu and Kali Linux. There are several other flavors of Linux that may work based on the hardware specs. - Consider using Virtual Machines. If you have an older Windows PC, you can install Virtual Box for free and then create Virtual images of several Linux operating systems to run inside the Virtual Machine. The advantage of using a Virtual Machine is that is something goes wrong, you can always delete it and start over without affecting the Windows environment.
- Consider inexpensive sing board computers such as the Raspberry Pi 4. You can get a Pi 4, SD Card, keyboard, mouse, etc for about $50 and connect to a TV or old monitor that accepts HDMI.