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IT Security Interviews Exposed
Ben Rothke writes "Information security is a hot career area and is among
the strongest fields within IT for growth and opportunity. With excellent long-term career prospects,
increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and an increase in security &
privacy regulations and legislation, the demand for security professionals is
significant. Even with a bright future, that does not necessarily mean
that a career in information security is right for everyone. What differentiates an excellent security
professional from a mediocre one is their passion for the job. With that, IT
Security Interviews Exposed is a mixed bag of a book. For those that are looking for an information
security spot and have the requisite passion for the job, much of the
information should already be known. For
someone who lacks that passion and simply wants a security job, their lack of
breadth will show and the information in the book likely won't be helpful,
unless they have a photographic memory to remember all of the various data
points." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
IT Security Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Information Security Job
author
Chris Butler
pages
218
publisher
Wiley
rating
8
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
0471779873
summary
Good review for a pro, but not for newbies.
If you find information security challenging and either
want a job in the field or are looking for a better job in the field, the book
will be quite valuable. But for those
looking for a hot security job, their lackings will likely show through on in
interview, even with the help of this book.
As to the actual content, chapter 1 provides a good overview of how to find, interview and get a security job. The chapter contains many bits of helpful information, especially to those whose job seeking skills are deficient. A good piece of advice the author's state is that one should never pay a fee for headhunting services. There are many people that call themselves recruiters, but are nothing more than fax servers who charge for the service. The burden to pay is always on the hiring firm, and a job seeker should be extremely suspicious of anyone requesting a fee to find them a position.
I would hope that in future editions of the book, the authors expand on chapter one. The chapter itself in fact could easily me made into a book in its own right. As part of the job search process, many job searchers often do not ask themselves enough fundamental questions if they are indeed in the right place in their career. Such an approach is taken by Lee Kushner, founder and CEO of the information security recruitment firm LJ Kushner and Associates. Kushner formulated the following 7 questions that every information security job candidate should ask themselves:
1. What are my long and short term plans?
2. What are my strengths and weaknesses?
3. What skills do I need to develop?
4. Have I acquired a new skill during the past year?
5. What are my most significant career accomplishments and will I soon achieve another one?
6. Have I been promoted over the past three years?
7. What investments have I made in my own career?
The other 9 chapters of the book all have the same format; an overview of the topic, and then various questions and interviewer may pose. The reality that these topics of network and security fundamentals, firewalls, regulations, wireless, security tools, and more, are essential knowledge for a security professional. Anyone trying to go through a comprehensive information security interview and wing it by reviewing the material will likely only succeed if the interviewer is inept. Anyone attempting to mimic the questions and answers in the book in a real-world interview will immediately be found to be a sham if the interviewer deviates even slightly from the script, which should be expected.
What really separates a good candidate from a great candidate is hands-on, practical and real-world security experience. Such a candidate won't need a question and answer format to showcase themselves in an interview. Their experience should shine, and not their ability to rattle of security acronyms.
If a company is serious about hiring qualified people, the interview process should not be about short technical questions and acronym definitions. It should entail an open discussion with significant give and take. Having a candidate detail their methodology for deploying and configuring a firewall should be given more credence than their ability to define the TCP the three-way handshake.
Ultimately, the efficacy of the book is in the disposition of the reader. For the security newbie who wants a crash course in security in order to quickly land a security job, heaven help the company that would hire such a person. While one should indeed not judge a book by its cover; this book's cover and title may lead some readers to think that the book is their golden ticket to a quick landing into a great career. The breadth of information that a security professional needs to know precludes and short of cramming or quick introductions. Those with a lack of security experience attempting to use this book to hide their shortcomings will only embarrass themselves on an interview.
On the other hand, for the reader who has a background in information security who wants an update on network and security fundamentals, they will find IT Security Interviews Exposed a helpful title. The book contains a plethora of valuable information written in a clear and easy to read style. In a little over 200 pages, the book is able to provide the reader with a good review of what they know or may have forgotten. Used in such a setting by such a reader makes the book a most helpful tool for the serious security professional looking to advance their career.
Ben Rothke is a security consultant with BT INS and the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase IT Security Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Information Security Job from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As to the actual content, chapter 1 provides a good overview of how to find, interview and get a security job. The chapter contains many bits of helpful information, especially to those whose job seeking skills are deficient. A good piece of advice the author's state is that one should never pay a fee for headhunting services. There are many people that call themselves recruiters, but are nothing more than fax servers who charge for the service. The burden to pay is always on the hiring firm, and a job seeker should be extremely suspicious of anyone requesting a fee to find them a position.
I would hope that in future editions of the book, the authors expand on chapter one. The chapter itself in fact could easily me made into a book in its own right. As part of the job search process, many job searchers often do not ask themselves enough fundamental questions if they are indeed in the right place in their career. Such an approach is taken by Lee Kushner, founder and CEO of the information security recruitment firm LJ Kushner and Associates. Kushner formulated the following 7 questions that every information security job candidate should ask themselves:
1. What are my long and short term plans?
2. What are my strengths and weaknesses?
3. What skills do I need to develop?
4. Have I acquired a new skill during the past year?
5. What are my most significant career accomplishments and will I soon achieve another one?
6. Have I been promoted over the past three years?
7. What investments have I made in my own career?
The other 9 chapters of the book all have the same format; an overview of the topic, and then various questions and interviewer may pose. The reality that these topics of network and security fundamentals, firewalls, regulations, wireless, security tools, and more, are essential knowledge for a security professional. Anyone trying to go through a comprehensive information security interview and wing it by reviewing the material will likely only succeed if the interviewer is inept. Anyone attempting to mimic the questions and answers in the book in a real-world interview will immediately be found to be a sham if the interviewer deviates even slightly from the script, which should be expected.
What really separates a good candidate from a great candidate is hands-on, practical and real-world security experience. Such a candidate won't need a question and answer format to showcase themselves in an interview. Their experience should shine, and not their ability to rattle of security acronyms.
If a company is serious about hiring qualified people, the interview process should not be about short technical questions and acronym definitions. It should entail an open discussion with significant give and take. Having a candidate detail their methodology for deploying and configuring a firewall should be given more credence than their ability to define the TCP the three-way handshake.
Ultimately, the efficacy of the book is in the disposition of the reader. For the security newbie who wants a crash course in security in order to quickly land a security job, heaven help the company that would hire such a person. While one should indeed not judge a book by its cover; this book's cover and title may lead some readers to think that the book is their golden ticket to a quick landing into a great career. The breadth of information that a security professional needs to know precludes and short of cramming or quick introductions. Those with a lack of security experience attempting to use this book to hide their shortcomings will only embarrass themselves on an interview.
On the other hand, for the reader who has a background in information security who wants an update on network and security fundamentals, they will find IT Security Interviews Exposed a helpful title. The book contains a plethora of valuable information written in a clear and easy to read style. In a little over 200 pages, the book is able to provide the reader with a good review of what they know or may have forgotten. Used in such a setting by such a reader makes the book a most helpful tool for the serious security professional looking to advance their career.
Ben Rothke is a security consultant with BT INS and the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase IT Security Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Information Security Job from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I tell the candidate that he has 60 seconds to break into the Pentagon while I hold a gun to his head and a really hot chick gives him a blow job. And it's give a take: he breaks into the Pentagon, and he gets a blow job. Win win!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
My blog
Isn't it true of all professions that passion is what distinguishes the okay from the excellent? There might be some exceptions, but it holds in the vast majority of cases. It's always about your devotion to the job and what you bring to it. I don't think IT Security is unique in this sense. This is most certainly a ripe and growing profession, however, with the proliferation of cyber-crimes.
Fear the penguin.
Don't those seven questions mentioned in the summary apply to any job, and not just information security?
Sadly, the company I work for often made policy out of hiring on acronym knowledge. This was nice if they ever ended up on Jeopardy, but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans in practice. From a managerial aspect, a good employee should be knowledgeable and dedicated to the subject and work area. When our initial information security officer was hired, he was hired on his acronym knowledge. However, his lackadaisical dismissal of not only effective but common sense IT security jeopardized the company's livelihood: he was look for a cushy check, not a passion. Thankfully, he is long gone, but others like him aren't.
...is building your reputation and experience to the level that a CEO or other top-level manager understands your talent, combined with understanding the need for security as part of their company's overhead.
Being passionate is great. But that is a small part of the demand that employers have for a security professional. If they don't understand the demand, there is no supply in this case, pertaining to that particular employer.
We have many customers with great security needs, but they were not aware of them until we briefed them on it. In some cases, we specifically turned down contracts because they lacked security. In other cases, we negotiated to REMOVE some security burdens because the customer was wasting their money, shooting off big words that didn't pertain to their industry.
It is rare that I meet a security professional without passion. It isn't rare when I meet one who doesn't have the business skill to sell their job security to their employer. I've also met my share of security professionals (W2) who are so embedded in their network(s) that they're ignorant of other security flaws that are evident to a consultant. Passion doesn't necessarily mean efficient.
Without the management on board, your job will suck, even if you're passionate about it. Here's a place where being proactive will keep you employed. Being reactive will get you canned. Passionate or not.
| "Information security is a hot career area and is among the strongest fields within IT for growth and opportunity. With excellent long-term career prospects, increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and an increase in security & privacy regulations and legislation, the demand for security professionals is significant..." |
Not to rain on Chris Butler's parade or anything, but this position can be outsourced to anywhere in the world with a communications line and a back office, event thou your Security Consultant has an office just down the street.
Thousands of businesses outsource their IT security every day. Lots of it goes overseas, too. And the best part of it is that it's free. The bad part is they don't know they are outsourcing it at all.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What really separates a good candidate from a great candidate is hands-on, practical and real-world security experience.
As a self made high level infosec professional, albeit one who of his own volition too a promotion to a maangement level in a different IT area, I would like to say that this is not true. Here are a few things that makes a great infosec candidate:
1. Communication skills: A proper infosec pro does not do much technical work outside of running security systems. Even this is irrelevant in larger orgs - you have offshore resources for this work. What a security pro does do, however, is interface with all manner of technical and non-technical cross-functional teams. A normal day could include techincal meetings with networkops teams to go over firewall pinhole rules, a governance meeting with controllers, presentations to upper management on new initiatives, and policy making decision with lawyers. Communication is key.
2. Ability to see the larger picture: One of my favorite sayings was that infosec's job was not to say "no", but to say "yes, and here's how to do it safely". Too many infosec practitioners, including ones with years and years of experience, turn into technology luddites. That is 180 degrees off what a true infosec practitioner does. Your job isn't to limit people, but to enable them to do their jobs better and safer - better is true for all IT roles, safer is true for infosec.
3. Adequate technical background: I don't care what your background is in, but I would like to see a solid technical background. I don't want you doing risk analysis on firewalls, application security reviews, or hardware/software recommendations without being able to understamd the bsic concepts behind the technology.
So, given the above and no security experience versus a complete nerd with no social skills and an attitude honed from 10 years of treating his "security" job as an excuse to say "no" to every request so he can go back to web surfing... ERRR, "keeping abreast of vulnerabilities", I take the former every time. Infosec experience be damned.
Oh please, let me insert my Project Manager joke here (thank you):
So there's a software engineer, a hardware engineer, and a project manager washed up on a desert island. They've been stuck there for years and years, and an interesting bottle washes ashore and someone pulls the cork off, as a genie appears from within.
The genie says, "Thank you for opening the bottle, I've been stuck in there for 4000 years. As a reward for my rescue, you can have anything, and as much of it as you want. Let's just be quick, okay, and get on with our lives."
The software engineer clarified, "Anything, and as much as we want?" And he quickly received a most-positive response from the genie.
So, in short order a wish list followed, "A big house in Miami, a good relationship with a supermodel, who's also a little nerdy, so everything works well between us... money in the bank, liquor in the cabinet, etc., etc." Finally, after requesting everything imaginable, the genie asked, "is that all?" The software engineer requested so much coolness on which to base his life upon, and for the most part, all he could think of was escaping the island, thus he could think of nothing else; so he answered the genie with his request, and immediately disappeared from sight.
The hardware engineer immediately asked why the software engineer vanished completely, and the genie calmly assured her, that all was well, and that the software engineer was now reveling with many drunk women in his new ultra-cool Miami beach house.
So the hardware engineer, throwing caution into the wind as to the imaginable risks, began to create her own fantasy list, which included a Swiss chalet, a Swiss bank account, Swiss chocolate, a snowboard with piezo electronics, etc. etc. etc., and soon enough she disappeared too.
What remained was the project manager who never really contributed much to anyone's survival anyway. All this person did was make grandiose plans and yelled a lot while pointing at a make-shift calendar of 'milestones'. Okay, things got done, but at what cost? And were they really that good, after all?
The PM was extremely unimaginative to begin with, and frankly was stumped as how best to proceed. The PM gave much thought to his future, but struggled so; meanwhile the genie grew more and more visibly impatient; since it has been ~4000 years in the bottle after all.
It didn't take long before the (creative?) pressure broke down the PM, who could only blurt out the following desire upon the Genie...
"Well, alright. Those two did work hard all this time, making life bearable so we at least survived to reach this point. The hydroelectric damn those two built out of coconuts was particularly useful..."
So the Project manager thinks for the longest while, as the genie grew more and more impatient, and finally, under the stress, the PM blurts out, "FINE, those two worked sooo hard, and truly did a wonderful job all these years, and we've finally reached this most-major-milestone. I suppose they do enjoy such rewards as they been endowed with..." The he turns to the genie and explains, "Please let them have their moment of pleasure with the women/men, and the liquor, and the jacuzzi... Clearly they deserve it; but still, I'd really like for both of them to be back here by 2 o'clock".
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
The interviewer opened a phone book sized tome and read questions w/o looking up once. The next level up was with an associate partner who essentially shouted at me for 30 minutes about how great it was to work there how partners at any other firm would happily take a lower level job at PW but at the same time anyone who didn't work at PW was a moron and a loser.
If you're getting into infosec for any other reason than the fact that you're a natural paranoid who's horrified at the careless stupidity of the majority; you're wasting everyones time!
Here's the really good bit: the interviewer can't ask you questions about your past experience or clients, because that's confidential. If pressed you just need to say that "You wouldn't want me to talk to future employers about your security setup, so you must respect previous clients' confidentiality".
Now if you think this leads to:
- no means of checking credentials
- a job for life
- the worse things get, the greater the need for security
- an industry filled with the clueless (see #1)
- a universal policy of "when in doubt reduce access even further"
... and if that didn't work, tighten it even more- total chaos, due to the lack of rigour and standards
You'd be right. Now where do I signpoliticians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I bought this book and I recommend it to those that are experienced in the field. This book was exactly I needed. It was a brief refresher on topics that I had previously learned, and certified on in the past. For example the CISSP is massive exam that covers a lot of topics. No one uses all the topics covered on a day to day basis. This book brought those things I dont normally use back to the front of my mind so I could be sharp during the interview. However, this book would bear little fruit to those not already familiar with the material. My interview consisted of the normal interview questions then I had a seperate technical interview. It was an oral exam of about 25-30 questions. I credit this book for helping me with that.
Speaking as an IT Security pro, leave your "security through obscurity" mindset at the door. If you walk in telling everyone how Apple is so freaking awesome, and it doesn't need a virus scanner, and Teh Lunix is TEH MOST SEKUR EVAR!1!1!!!, you are going to be laughed out of the interview.
These are security guys, not Slashdotters. Most of them know better than to buy into the FUD. They've likely seen thousands of rooted Lunix servers, know about all the unpatched errors in OSX, etc. They are probably using Vista notebooks. Teh Lunix is just a toy you use a few times, some of the tools you can use on it are nice, mostly because they're free. But it's just not ready for prime time. And all real IT security pros will already know this, but some MS-haters usually try going into the profession, and fool people into paying them a ton of money. Which really makes them no different from any other Lunix consultant.
Management is technical all the way to the top. (a CEO with a pair of engineering degrees and a COO with a PhD in CS) The top isn't very far; it's a small place with a very flat structure. So far it seems we've avoided collecting the sort of people who make others miserable. Technically we're at the top of the field.
We're a hacker-friendly company, despite doing contracts for the man. We have extreme flex hours. We don't have layers of corporate crud. Business is booming.
We write our own tools. (exotic instrumented emulators and virtual machines, a decompiler, etc.) We do malware analysis, vulnerability research, reverse engineering of all sorts, and so on.
It's in the USA (two locations on the east coast), for US citizens only.
So, uh, reply if I should contact you.
I was really disappointed. I hope I just got the freak lame interview and most of their interviews are a little more relevant (for Google's sake), but my 2nd phone interview with them was random trivia. No problem solving, no brainstorming, no thought process at all, just information retrieval.
You'd think the company that revolutionized fast information retrieval would understand that "man " or Googling something is almost instant, but creativity and intelligence are priceless. The interviewer asked me what all the Unix signals were, which ones a process could override handlers for, what characters were valid in a filename in Linux, etc. This stuff would literally take an hour (tops) to learn, 5 minutes (tops) to look up. I'd have looked it up, but that was against the terms of the interview.
Needless to say I felt extremely cheated.
to test technical knowledge. I mean, isn't that the whole point of having dozens of different security certifications?
If a candidate has the gold standard: CISSP. Then there can be no question of his/her technical knowledge, or experperience.
Right?
"unless they have a photographic memory to remember all of the various data points" - DUH? They bought the book. Why would they have to memorize anything? Do you throw away a book once you've read it?