Re: Information Security?

Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
Mon, 23 Nov 1998 22:04:00 -0500

WRIGHT, Reuben wrote:
>
> I'm certainly interested in the field. Beyond a background in Maths and
> Computation and a decent knowledge of the hacking world I've not
> developed it much. What's the latest thing to grab your attention?

Currently I'm more interested in marketing my security skills as a career. I have been involved in lots of interesting things, but the real question is how to market it. How to make a full-time job out of it, and how to make lots of money doing it.

My experience with my own company have not been as lucrative as I would like. I have since found that I can do much better by letting a big company like IBM market security, and then hand me the engagements when they are contracted. This frees me from marketing, and lets me do the real work for real money.

The market right now, is the market itself. That is, companies trying to make money on the Internet are the largest-growing Internet segment, and they have the most money as well. The more money they make, the more targetted they are, and the more money they will spend on security.

I see a lot of cyberpunk interest on this and other lists, but I find few people actually doing it. And like with any job, the glamour quickly fades when you face the day-to-day reality of having a full-time job and following every project to completion. I find few people able to make the transition from wanna-be, to actual practitioner.

--
Harvey Newstrom                                  <mailto:harv@gate.net>
Author, Engineer, Entrepreneur,             <http://www.gate.net/~harv>
Consultant, Researcher, Scientist.           <ldap//certserver.pgp.com>