Edward Toliver spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Army working with command and control systems and air and missile defense operations. He holds a TS/SCI clearance. He worked inside Raven Rock Mountain Complex. He’s been stationed in nine locations across the globe.
And he’ll tell you straight up: the Cyber Warrior Program at MyComputerCareer was one of the two hardest things he’s done in his entire military career.
He also graduated with a 95 average, all four certifications, and zero apologies about how hard he had to work for it.
Edward joined Get Into IT Live on June 5, the day before he and 1,577 fellow graduates virtually walked across the stage at MyComputerCareer’s summer ceremony on Saturday, June 6. Here’s what he had to say.
From Generator Mechanic to Cybersecurity
Edward didn’t come up through the Army as a traditional IT guy. He enlisted in 2006 as a generator mechanic and got attached to a signal company, which put him in the middle of an IT unit. That’s where he picked up fiber optic splicing skills through basic splicer school, learning copper splicing, fusion splicing, and aerial techniques. That experience planted the seed.
Still on active duty and stationed at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, Edward connected with a contact who reviewed his resume and pointed him toward MyComputerCareer’s Cyber Warrior Program through his Transitional Assistance Program briefings. Word of mouth, not an ad.
“Prior to that, had I never met that individual, I probably would have never found out about the program,” he said.
The Cohort Culture That Makes the Difference
One of the most consistent things veterans say about the Cyber Warrior Program is how much the shared military background in the room matters. Edward confirmed it.
His cohort included people from the Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard. They had their own Discord channel. They pushed each other in breakout rooms. They talked about more than coursework, including how to eventually open their own cybersecurity businesses.
“You can level with them in a sense,” Edward said. “You don’t have to really say, ‘Hey, what does this mean?’ You understand the language and lingo. It takes the load off.”
He also made a point to single out instructors Brett Boyer and Tim Culpepper by name: “We had extremely great instructors in this course. Extremely good.”
What Military Service Really Prepares You For in IT
When asked what skills from his Army career transferred most directly into the coursework, Edward pointed to two things: the ability to multitask and the discipline to see a project through to the end.
“In the Army, you may have 12 to 20 tasks just in a day,” he said. “Being able to take a project and see it till it’s complete, those are the two main things.”
His background in high-security environments also gave him a practical lens on network security concepts that other students were encountering for the first time. Things like shoulder surfing, clean desk policies, and piggybacking into secured areas weren’t abstract textbook scenarios for Edward. They were Tuesday.
“When you practice high security every day, when you see it on paper, it makes it a whole lot easier to translate,” he explained.
The 95 Average Didn’t Come Easy
Edward finished the Cyber Warrior Program earning A+, Network+, Security+, and CySA+, along with the CompTIA Security Analytics Professional stackable certification. For what it’s worth, the hardest exam in his opinion wasn’t Security+ or CySA+. It was A+ Core 2.
“A+ Core 2 dives into Network+, Security+. It pretty much dives into all of it,” he said. “It’s very broad and very general. That was the hardest exam.”
As for how he managed the workload while balancing Army life and family responsibilities, he treated studying like training.
“Your brain is the exact same way as your muscles. A lot of soldiers come through this program trying to cram 20 and 21 hours a day. At 8 o’clock every night, that was my stopping point.” He was in bed by 9 or 9:30, up the next morning, and used weekends to push 9 or 10 days ahead so he’d have time to review material before exams rather than race to finish assignments.
“You do not want to be on day 14 finishing your last assignment. You want to finish on day 10 so you have time to study the material to pass your exam.”
His test-taking strategy was equally deliberate: answer every question he knew with certainty, skip performance-based questions initially, and revisit them after going through the full exam because later questions sometimes contain the answer to earlier ones.
He also built custom practice quizzes using AI tools, broken down by exam domain and sub-objectives, with a specific focus on acronyms. “Acronyms lead you into the answer to the question. If you don’t know what they stand for, you’re in trouble.”
What It Meant to Cross That Stage
Edward was candid about what graduation represented.
“This is one of the hardest things I’ve done since I’ve been in my military career. Once you graduate, you really know you completed something challenging. I have confidence in myself now that I can carry myself in a different manner. It wasn’t given to me. I just had to go get it.”
For anyone with a military background considering the Cyber Warrior Program, his advice was characteristically direct:
“I’m not the type of person that’s going to tell you the good stuff only. If you’re not ready to work, if you’re not ready to sacrifice time and things that make you comfortable, do not go through this course. But when you do pass, you have access to training a lot of people aren’t going to get. It is worth it. I will tell you it’s worth it.”
The GI Bill is accepted, and financial aid is available for those who qualify.
Ready to find out if the Cyber Warrior Program is the right fit for your next mission? Learn more about how MyComputerCareer serves veterans and active-duty service members.
One item still flagged for your verification before publishing: Brett Berer’s last name is a spoken name from the transcript and I can’t confirm the spelling independently. Worth a quick check internally before this goes live.