Calling all security pros
January 5, 2009
So, the economy has changed a great deal over the past few months since Lee Kushner and I announced our survey on career management in information security. And we’ve had some great responses.
I wanted to announce that we’ll be closing the survey at the end of the month, so if you haven’t filled it out yet, please, please, please take 15 minutes and give us your thoughts on what careers are like here. We’re excited to analyze some real data, and get the information out there in our talks at conferences in the first half of 2009.
Click here to fill out the survey. With all of the change in the economy and the job market, the more information that Lee and I have, the better we have to get some interesting data to help those in the industry over the next few months.
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Please help by filling out our survey
August 23, 2008
At our recent Defcon 16 talk on Careers, Lee Kushner and I released a survey on careers in the information security industry.
Lee and I have spent the last couple of years having a good number of conversations on the way that people navigate careers in this industry, and we have talked about it at a few conferences now. But we got really tired of not having any real data on the topic. There are a good number of “career” or “salary” surveys that are done every year, but all of them have a particular slant – whether they’re performed by a professional organization or a media outlet, there’s a particular audience that is served by the survey that tends to slant the results toward a particular segment of the industry.
Lee and I were lamenting this a few months back, and one of us said: “Man, wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a survey that covered the entire breadth of the industry, with no particular audience as a target?”
Since there wasn’t, we decided to create one. And, since we’re not great survey experts, we worked with Dr. Max Kilger, a Ph.D. from Stanford who has done great work with the the Honeynet Project. Max’s brilliant guidance helped us turn the survey into something useful for gathering real, unbiased data on what’s going on in the industry.
So, I’m asking – please help us out with this one by filling it out. We’d love to be able to come back at the end of 2008 and give some real data to the industry on what’s actually going on out there
Taking the Long View of Careers and Jobs
January 24, 2008
Jason Alba always knows how to get me up on my soap box. In a recent comment on this post, he says:
The big question, for me, is “how can we be more concerned about our careers than our jobs?”
And it’s a great question. Because most of the time, we spend our lives working on our jobs rather than our careers. With the exception of the few days around New Year’s, we rarely stop to take stock of where things are headed and what our next steps are.
Yet, it’s exactly that introspection that leads us to happiness and out of the “Monday” type world that Dan Miller talks about in his latest book and on his blog.
The problem is, most of us are focused on the tactical, without taking time out for the strategic. It’s a problem that I see in business a lot, and even more in life management – we really need to take time out to ask ourselves the important questions around career. It’s much like what Gerber said about the difference between working “in our business” (i.e. doing our jobs) and working “on our business” (i.e. focusing on structures that keep us moving forward).
So, what have you done to work on your career lately instead of just in your career? What are your next steps for growth and the next challenges you want to take on? What conversations do you need to have with peers, bosses, clients, mentors, etc. to take yourself to the next step of your career?
Top 10 CISO Resignation Reasons…
January 23, 2008
You know, I’m often glad that I’m not a CISO, especially in light of the coming economic downturn. (Yes, I said it. I predict a downturn.)
Apparently, someone at CISO magazine thinks so, too. This list was, as my friend Bill P (who needs to blog more!!!) put it, a “water snorter”.
My favorite is #9: The opportunity to be tied in a leather bag with ravenous, rabid ocelots caught your eye on Monster.com.
That pretty much says it all.
The Company Will Take Care Of Me…
January 17, 2008
Over at her fantastic new blog, Melina Murray (full-disclosure: she’s my wife and one of my favorite writers) has a great post about the company’s responsibility toward employees. From the post:
“[The] answer I get is something like this, “Well, I know that if I put in hard work, work overtime with no pay and don’t complain, I will benefit when the company is successful.””
This is such a common way of thinking – I see it all the time in the information security industry, especially. We saw our parents grow up with a company that would take responsibility for their growth and well-being (health care, pension, etc.). And we grew to believe that a company would show us loyalty.
Well, guess what? It ain’t that way any more. This is 2008, and, at the risk of sounding heartless or cold, we have to fend for ourselves. I said it over and over in the Parachute book – your career is your responsibility.
It’s just nice to hear it from someone who thinks from the perspective of HR.