I loaded 109,864 events into Splunk and went hunting for the noisiest host on the network. My first query found a suspect. My next two proved it innocent — and somewhere in the middle I realized I'd been writing this query language for ten years without knowing its name.

I set out to install Splunk Free and write a tidy walkthrough. Instead I hit four errors, discovered the tutorial was built for a machine that isn't mine, and had to force-restart my laptop — and learned more than a clean install ever would have taught me.

Cybersecurity felt like forty open tabs and no idea where to start. So I turned the whole path into a bingo board — 25 beginner steps, in any order.