40 is a great time. In fact, I went down a similar path.
Now that you've done your share of sysadmins, SRE and software developer, you can see how things can fail. That's the heart of security. As tptacek advises, choose an area of security to focus on and go down that path for awhile. You'll find you will want to go further or jump to another path, but security is a great thing. The world is going to need more security-aware people and you can be at the forefront of it.
My current security focus is holistic defence of data flowing from customer to company. The whole SDLC lifecycle. It's fun but super challenging because it focuses on changing human mindsets and behaviour, but my Dev and ops skills are essential to my technical success.
And certs are useless on their own. Don't do certs unless you can specifically get something out of it. Your work experience is much more valuable than a cert at this point.
Now that you've done your share of sysadmins, SRE and software developer, you can see how things can fail. That's the heart of security. As tptacek advises, choose an area of security to focus on and go down that path for awhile. You'll find you will want to go further or jump to another path, but security is a great thing. The world is going to need more security-aware people and you can be at the forefront of it.
My current security focus is holistic defence of data flowing from customer to company. The whole SDLC lifecycle. It's fun but super challenging because it focuses on changing human mindsets and behaviour, but my Dev and ops skills are essential to my technical success.
And certs are useless on their own. Don't do certs unless you can specifically get something out of it. Your work experience is much more valuable than a cert at this point.