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Government, Military and Private Sector Fighting Over Next-Gen Cyber-Warriors
An anonymous reader writes Both the U.S. Army and Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ launched new initiatives to address their severe shortfalls in cyber-security specialists. The United States Army Reserve launched the "cyber private public partnership" (Cyber P3) on Capitol Hill, which will give reservists the opportunity to train as cyber-warriors in six U.S. universities, in partnership with 11 employers. In the UK GCHQ announced an "Insiders Summer School", where first and second-year computer science undergraduates will be paid to attend a ten week intensive cyber-training course, culminating in a live display of their online and hacking acumen. The Government Accountability Office estimates a shortfall of 40,000 cyber security operatives, and with multiple branches of government in several western countries fighting each other (and the private sector, and the criminal arena) for the patronage of computer science students, cyber-security is looking to be the safest career path an undergraduate could pursue.
Are the armed services types swarming over this just because if it has 'warrior' in the name they have to get a piece of the action, or do they actually have something resembling a coherent plan for being able to make a convincing pitch to the people they are hoping to attract?
Buying their services as consultants, or as civilian employees of DoD agencies, sure; cut them a check and they'll show right up; but some of these plans actually seem to involve enlisted geeks wearing hilariously incongruous camo in front of banks of monitors and 'cyber warrior'-ing. How is selling that going to work?
I've jumped through the nasty hurdles of the usajobs.gov sites hundreds of times, and never heard back. It's like the resumes go in a black hole, and I've heard similar from other colleagues. 14 years of sys/network admin/security with a masters in cybersecurity... and not one f*cking call back from these gov't jobs ever. Hell, I've even got an active TS clearance, so that hoop is cleared. Finding a job in the private sector.. pffftt... no problem there. Time to overhaul the entire gov't hiring system IMO.
cyber-security is looking to be the safest career path an undergraduate could pursue.
Ok put away the grease gun, we get it. our cybers need more warriors, because our government (at least here in the united states) can only solve problems by declaring a misguided overfuned underperforming war on them. but next-gen cyber warriors only makes sense in a country that hasnt ranked 31st in mathematics, 23rd in science, and 17th in reading on a global stage. next generation technology "warriors" in a country that thinks global warming isnt real and evolution has "alternate" theories is an uphill climb but lets say for the sake of argument we can get past it. Youre now proposing undergraduate education, something consistently underfunded in every state, every year, is the way forward? This type of education represents one of the statistically largest amounts of debt in the US, and its in all likelyhood forecasted as the next bubble to burst. Its a type of education that by all indications has the same rate of employment after completion as having never attended college at all due to 'lack of experience.'
so lets assume we make this a government priority and not a privatized military like halliburton. what then? The glaring problem in the armed forces isnt funding or training, its plummeting recruitment rates. You see, you can only have a few wars that fail before the limbless vets and combat shocked alcoholics start piling up in society, first outside the VA, and next outside freeway onramps and alleys. Eventually it doesnt matter why youre fighting, they wont join. For the few left who really want to fight a war, Most potential Army reservists are addicted to prescription drugs, are overweight, have mental health problems, or too many tattoos that prohibit them from joining the military. http://www.newsmax.com/Health-...
Good people go to bed earlier.
Despite defeats in both Iraq and Afghanistan still being dragged out as America's longest running wars in its history,
Hard to take them seriously when we had troops on the ground in Vietnam since Eisenhower sent them in, until Nixon ordered them all out. First US troops on the ground in 1954 (non combat), and first US soldier death in 1959. The last troops out in 1975. 16 years from first US death to last. 21 from first US military personnel officially in country to oppose the North, to the last leaving. Depending on your definitions, that's quite a range, but still longer than the time from 2001 to now, so I have no idea how Iraq and Afghanistan are the longest. Perhaps it's the revisionist history that Kennedy started the Vietnam war, and Nixon ended it, so there was 8 years of the Vietnam war between Kennedy being voted in and Nixon being voted in, even though Nixon only ended it because he knew it wouldn't be what he's most remembered for.
Learn to love Alaska
This sure doesn't appear to be the case. —an undergraduate about to enter the job market with a degree in security
...cyber-security is looking to be the safest career path an undergraduate could pursue....
Maybe it's ok for undergrads.
But I have 35 years in Information Security, was part of the team that developed the BS7799/ISO2700 series world standard for commercial Information Security, and I haven't had a contract for the last year.
The real trick in computing is not to be 63 years old...
Will never happen. It's probably the biggest upside to working in military/sensitive government IT - it can't be outsourced, the work has to be done by US Citizens (usually with security clearances) by law.
That's not to say there aren't downsides, but worrying about H1-Bs isn't a concern.
"cyber-security is looking to be the safest career path an undergraduate could pursue."
Uh oh, here comes another surge in CS enrollment. Seriously, I just heard a story talking about how petroleum engineering undergrad programs are suffering because the oil boom is slowly settling back down. These new grads were getting six figure starting salaries when things were going great, and now things are leveling off. Any temporary spike in demand for new grads is usually smoothed over very quickly by economic forces. I would just focus on the fundamentals -- get a good solid CS education, engineering education, or whatever, and your skills will transfer if you have the talent to succeed in these fields without the artificial demand.
The first dotcom boom led to a huge jump in CS enrollment, followed by a prolonged period of un- or underemployment in the field. I still think we're working through a bunch of the first hangers-on even today that haven't been weeded out completely. Chasing a college major for money if you don't have the talent or desire just ends badly when the temporary good times end and you find yourself in a bad spot. The second dotcom boom today is generating more CS enrollment again as people want to write the hot new phone app...guess where most of them are going to be when the world moves on to something else??
The reason why the armed forces aren't getting the new grads is most likely due to culture. If you're a civilian DoD contractor, you're paid pretty well but there are a lot of political obstacles to jump over. I've worked with a lot of different types of people in my career, and the "elite cyber warriors" that would be hunting down vulnerabilities in foreign systems would probably bristle at the typical office politics situations, let alone what happens in government/military.
That said, I've always wondered how the CIA/NSA attracts super smart mathematicians, systems experts, etc. The government pay scale is very rigid. Say what you will about the NSA, but they really do seem to have a pretty big cache of talented people to do some of the things they've been doing. Beyond the idea of public service, the only thing in my eyes that makes a permanent job in government or military attractive is the stability and guaranteed retirement. I'm liking stability now that I've grown up and produced offspring, but I'm sure the typical "elite hacker d00d" straight out of college doesn't care and is most likely hostile to government.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @06:12PM
from the skeletons-in-the-closet dept.
sciencehabit writes Valerie Barr was a tenured professor of computer science at Union College in Schenectady, New York, with a national reputation for her work improving computing education and attracting more women and minorities into the field. But federal investigators say that Barr lied during a routine background check about her affiliations with a domestic terrorist group that had ties to the two organizations to which she had belonged in the early 1980s. On 27 August, NSF said that her 'dishonest conduct' compelled them to cancel her temporary assignment immediately, at the end of the first of what was expected to be a 2-year stint. Colleagues who decry Barr's fate worry that the incident could make other scientists think twice about coming to work for NSF. In addition, Barr's case offers a rare glimpse into the practices of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), an obscure agency within the White House that wields vast power over the entire federal bureaucracy through its authority to vet recently hired workers.
http://news.sciencemag.org/peo...
In her 11 August response, Barr questioned whether the special agent who conducted the investigation “can be an impartial evaluator of academic scientists, or anyone with liberal political beliefs.” As evidence, she points to a posting on a blog maintained by the agent, a veteran who served in Iraq, and his family. The item is a copy of a popular Internet meme about an incident that supposedly took place in an introductory college biology course.
According to the story, a “typical liberal college professor and avowed atheist” declares his intent to prove that there is no God by giving the creator 15 minutes to strike him from the podium. A few minutes before the deadline, a Marine “just released from active duty and newly registered” walks up to the professor and knocks him out with one punch. When the professor recovers and asks for an explanation, the Marine replies, “God was busy. He sent me.”
If they really wanted to get people to fill these roles they wouldn't require them to go through the whole basic training garbage they require for entry. The type of people who would be good for these roles are not the type of people who will go through basic training. Which is why they go to the private sector and then get hired as a contractor thus bypassing the entire process and probably making more money anyways.
If I'm not mistaken, there was an article a month or two ago (at work so not much time to search on it) that was talking about the Air Force dropping requirements for physical conditioning (IE., no basic training, no staying in shape). So they are already working on that aspect of their target audience.
"Have you or do you currently smoke marijuana?" --Yes Clearance Denied....
No, most likely you'll be the guy who takes the fall, after the procurement chief.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I expect the CIA will become the Central Intelligence Corporation (a la Snow Crash) long before it ever lets uncleared/non-Citizens do its IT work, and that pretty much goes for the rest of the National Security apparatus.
The thing to keep in mind, too, is that this isn't just about the Government and the IT Workers it pays, it's largely about the Government Contracting firms that act as the middlemen. It's in the interests of those big corporate players in that arena (Northrop, Lockheed, GD, Booz Allen, etc) that it stay that way, because I doubt they're terribly interested in competing with Indian outsourcing firms, nor are they going to be keen on the fact that lowered prices on Defense IT means they can't charge the Government as much for those services.
"The universities were selected because they are top-tier schools with multi-disciplinary programs, Nelson said. The universities in the Cyber P3 are University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; Drexel University; George Mason University; Norwich University; University of Texas at San Antonio; and University of Washington Tacoma. " Are these really the top-tier schools? Why is MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UIUC not in this list?
Here's part of the problem:
The only one of these universities with a respectably ranked CS program is U of Washington.