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Cybersecurity Czar Job Is Useless, Says Spafford
Trailrunner7 writes "It's been about seven months since Obama announced his plan to hire a cybersecurity coordinator, and the job is still vacant. Several prominent security experts have turned the position down, and in an interview on Threatpost, Purdue professor Gene Spafford says that the position is pointless. 'It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn't take it, I'm not surprised. It's not a winning position. I'm not at all surprised by the fact that it's empty. That position is a blame-taking position,' Spafford said."
...for me? It has Czar in the title, it has to pay more than what I make.
I'll take it. I've even worked in security, although as a programmer not as an executive or highly respected author and lecturer (e.g., Bruce Schneier) which is what I imagine they want and will never get.
Where do I send my resumé?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm not sure a tzar helps. The people on the front line are independant businesses selling cyber security and the military. The two do not meet openly so the position is merely cerimonial.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
..won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. But it WILL have FarmVille.
See his blog post
Someone who's actually paid to be the goat.
I can do that! Were can I get a job like that.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
A real security czar would be the man or woman behind the curtain. With a limp, a raspy voice, and insist that they are always watching us watching them watch other people who watch Ebay watching people selling watches trying to find the best watch to buy. Even when the security czar knows that everyone just uses cell phones now instead of watches. Thats why he must watch the watch watchers.
"It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind"
Kinda represents the majority of IT departments in big corporations.
Tom Ridge was nothing but the designated fall guy at the Dept. of Homeland Security, but he managed to parlay it into a book deal and a ton of great press. Not bad for a guy who had formerly been an almost completely unknown governor of a minor state. You think anyone would have given a rat's ass about his memoirs if he had turned that job down?
If you can be a fall guy who manages to get out BEFORE the fall, there is real money and fame in it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Anyone else (unemployed and looking like me) feel like a disturbing portion of the job market is constituted of 'blame taking positions'?
It's probably paranoia, but I feel like the businessworld is composed of corrupt people who will lie and bullshit, and then the poor saps that get stuck with the 'blame taking positions'.
In my youth, I had naive libertarian beliefs about talented and competent people winning out in the free market against those types. Now that I've witnessed the naked annihilation of even the illusion of capitalism, via the bank bailouts... I just have no real hope that there is any way to make a living without either being one of those bullshitters, or poor blame taking saps. I guess the honorable thing is to just accept a sequence of blame taking jobs, and survive and get fed until we see a better age.
My coworkers are always volunteering me ... I'm (modestly) that good!
Here's a photo of me on the job: http://www.frogview.com/uploadimages/45f9f6b1c0ed04.86765571frogview-gallery.jpg
It could be my chance to move out of my mom's basement!
The assertion that this is a 'blame taking' job is unfounded, that it doesn't have statutory or budget authority is peripheral to what the role should be, and frankly somewhat insulting that the umbrage taken with it by 'the experts' is that it's a role that has no teeth.
It's a job where the President consults you for your opinion and takes action based on your advice. Boo hoo you don't have any authority or a budget. Any consultant that is hired on to a tech firm is in the same boat.
Also, yeah, I can understand why many security people have turned this job down. Because they're more interested in money than civil service -- how the hell is that a surprise?
...Leo Laporte is *the* man for the job.
You must be new around here... Almost everything we do is worthless.
But the drug czars have failed to stop drugs, so therefore a cybersecurity czar would improve cybersecurity!
I finally understand government logic!
OK, now we have more steps:
1. Invent something great.
2. Have millions to defend your patent.
3. Have millions to beat the vulture capitalists away from your baby.
4. Have a mother on the board of IBM and a father as a partner in one of the nation's most powerful law firms.
5. Acquire the social connections to market your product.
6. Profit.
Bonus reading: The cheerful history of Edison and Tesla, and why virtue does not always win, even when Mickey Rooney plays you in the movie.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."