Compass by Ctrl+Alt+Elite
Find your first realistic cyber direction.
Spend a week at Meridian, a fictional security company, as its newest hire. Five days, five real calls, zero typing. The week reads how you actually work, matches what it sees against real job postings, and hands you a direction with a plan.
Built for Black women stepping into cybersecurity — and open to everyone finding their way in.
Free. No account needed. About 15 minutes, at your pace.
Already applying and stuck?
What you walk out with
You do not leave with a grade. You leave with things you can hold: a scorecard, receipts, a plan, and a packet. All of it free, all of it on screen, none of it behind an email gate.
Your role-fit scorecard
Sample2 to 3 realistic starter roles ranked with why they fit, plus the roles to skip for now, in your own reasons.
- Security operations, detectionStrong fit
- Governance, risk, and complianceWorth a look
- Penetration testingSkip for now
Receipts, quoting your moves
SampleEvery read points at something you actually did during the week. No horoscope lines, no generic praise.
You checked the log before escalating. That is a detection habit.
You told the coworker what happened without blame. Teaching lives in that.
Five things, then two plans
SampleFive concrete next moves, a 7 day plan, and a 30 day plan. Day counts here describe what you build, never when someone hires you; nobody honest can promise that date.
- 1.One hands-on rep, sized to fit inside a week
- 2.One person-shaped connection, script included
- 3.One portfolio piece, started rather than planned
The Start Here packet
SampleExact job titles to search, the skills employers ask for set next to what you already have, and a flagged portfolio assignment. On screen, or one tap to download.
- security operations center analyst
- information security analyst
- identity and access management analyst
These are samples so you can see the shape. Yours are built from your week, and the essentials are never email-gated: leaving an email only ever means send my packet to me.
Two doors into the same week
Meridian hires two kinds of people. Both walk the same five days; the week simply asks harder questions of the one who has done this work before.
I am new to cyber
Career changer, help desk, retail, military, returning to work, or simply curious. You do not need a background to walk in; Day One meets you at the front desk and asks nothing you cannot answer.
Already in cyber and stuck?
Same week, harder calls. If you are in a SOC (the team that watches the alerts), GRC (the rules and risk side), or a junior seat and unsure of your next lane, the missions come in harder variants, the teaching drops away, and what you already do counts as evidence, never a restart.
The rules this product keeps
Free
The whole week, the results, and the packet. No paywall appears mid-story.
No account needed
Walk in and play. An account exists only to carry progress across devices, never to let you in.
Your data stays yours
Answers live on your device unless you choose to save them, and once there is anything stored, delete everything is right there. Export works the same way.
This is not a test
No scores, no grades, no timers. The week reads what the work feels like to you, and there is no way to fail it.
Privacy by default. Your answers stay on your device unless you choose to save them, and you can export or delete them any time. We practice the security we teach.