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Cyberwarrior Shortage Threatens US Security
An anonymous reader writes "US security officials say the country's cyberdefenses are not up to the challenge. In part, it's due to a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge necessary to do battle against would-be adversaries. The protection of US computer systems essentially requires an army of cyberwarriors, but the recruitment of that force is suffering. 'We don't have sufficiently bright people moving into this field to support those national security objectives as we move forward in time,' says James Gosler, a veteran cybersecurity specialist who has worked at the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Energy Department."
"We don't have sufficiently bright people moving into this field"
Yet we have sufficiently bright people who can create a system that rapes the stock market.
I'm not allowed to tag stories, but the moron who managed to misspell "cyberwarfare" as "cyberwarefare" is free and clear, huh? Nice job, Slashdot.
I can't seem to tag stories either and I have no idea why. I can add a tag and it appears to work, but I have never once refreshed the Slashdot main page and seen any tag I have applied. That is, they seem to just go straight to /dev/null. Tags I try to apply do seem to show up on my user page, however.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The federal government has a habit of imposing soul-crushing bureaucracies on its workers.
Probably only a very small fraction of citizens are talented and inclined to do cyberwarfare and are willing to put up with the bureaucracy.
I'd believe in stuff like
1. Shortages of people who patch their systems
2. Shortages of companies who are willing to pay security specialists a decent wage
3. Shortages of CTO's willing to pay for migration away from IE6 to something standards-compliant
4. Shortages of armed services who'd take overweight computer professionals over 30
5. The tooth fairy
6. Unicorns
But a shortage of cyberwarriors? That seems a bit far fetched.
I'm here in Canada - and I've tested the waters on controversial legal issues with computers - and I've considered going into the definately illegal waters just to see what would happen with the law.
There was a case a long while back where a high schooler in Montreal or somewhere in the East Coast of the United States (I heard the story second hand from someone so I'm sketchy on the details) where he basically set up a botnet, and then to test it out he had it perform a DOS attack while he was at school, I think he ended up taking down CNN.com or Yahoo for a bit or something.
Anyways, they hauled him off to juvee or some low security prison for a few years, and when he got out he was hired almost immediately for a security specialist job. (I believe at one of the websites he took down)
I'd try it myself but I'm too old to go to Juvee...
People who are typically drawn to computers are often not very good canidates for the military lifestyle. And to become good at Securing systems or hacking them.. you need be breath, eat and sleep computers (especially hacking them).
Hacking skills are not taught in schools and working for the goverment pays c@rp.. why would someone who spent years developing highly saught after skills work for the latest cyberwarfare agency when they could make big bucks in the private sector.
There are plenty of highly skilled security folks out there "Defend the nation" to. I dont see any real recruitment efforts going on that are worth while.
You need to read Where Have All The Hackers Gone. The guy who wrote it got a bronze Olympic medal returned to the US with a Google search. Worth reading.