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Tech Firms Seek Washington's Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances (bloomberg.com)
Major tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter are interested in hiring workers with top-secret security clearances as they deal with foreign meddling on their platforms and come under increased risk of hacks, reports Bloomberg. From the article: In doing so, companies such as Facebook are competing with defense contractors, financial firms and the U.S. government itself. Security clearances are a rare and valued commodity, whether at a bank trying to prevent hackers from stealing credit-card data and emptying accounts or at a manufacturer building parts for a stealth fighter or missile-defense radar system. Bringing former government cyber warriors on board at companies can facilitate interactions with U.S. agencies like the NSA or CIA as well as help the firms understand how to build stronger systems on their own. "They have the tradecraft," said Ronald Sanders, a former associate director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and now director of the school of public affairs at the University of South Florida. "And the trade craft is some of the best in the world."
As with anything the government does, there is a considerable tooth-to-tail ratio. For every person with a security clearance doing actual intelligence work (including cyber), there are least 10 others who have a clearance without doing that sort of work. For instance, the secretaries and administrative assistants, the HR personnel, the maintenance personnel, the groundskeepers, the managers who sit in meetings all day, the budget analysts, the financial personnel, the IT support staff, the janitorial staff, etc.
I point it out so that people understand that the pool from which the tech and defense firms are trying to hire is not of size N, but probably of size 0.2 * N. They might benefit from having some support staff with clearances, though they can certainly get by without it where the government cannot (support staff in classified facilities have to be cleared). The real challenge is that they are all competing for a small number of experienced intelligence professionals with active clearances.
BTW, you will not see them outsourcing these jobs to H1B workers.
In fact, that is an interesting thing about being a contractor for the government. If you are a worker bee, then you are practically immune from outsourcing. If another company gets awarded the contract you are working on, you can bet that with nearly 100% certainty the new winner of the contract will attempt to hire away all the workers that were on the old contract. Not only are you effectively immune from outsourcing, but you have a high likelihood of being able to continue working in the same geographic area (and maybe the same office/project) through any of a number of changes of employer. Try that in the civilian world. The tech companies will have to pony up, because the defense contractors already do.
just because people have clearances doesn't mean they have skillsets that would benefit this. It just means they don't have the markers that make them untrustworthy with highly sensitive information. there are plenty of people who hold a top-secret clearance that don't know where the "any" key is
it sounds more like someone got cyber-security industry confused with security clearance. i understand their need for cyber-defensive capabilities. some banks, like USAA, actually run their own in house cyber operations desk to help protect their digital assets. cyber-security as a trade spans across all digitally connected industries (govt, banking, industrial, commercial....) and they are all being head-hunted by the same groups. this would just be another company throwing their sharks into the feeding tank.
Security clearances mean fuck all. It only proves you passed a background check. Bragging about it is a negative signal.
What bullshit is this article trying to sell? Who benefits from this? Contracting companies?
You don't need any security clearance to work on a company's most secret stuff, or defend them from (cyber-)attacks or anything.
If they're recruiting people with (a need for a) clearance, it simply means they're under government contract, either directly or through another contractor.
Thank you Bloomberg for letting us know tech firms are working for the TLAs.
Why doesn't Facebook and others do what the defense industry does - get one if their employees to apply?
Because you can't just "apply" for a secret clearance; you must show that you have a specific requirement for one.
To have cleared employees, your company has to be working on a government contract that requires a clearance. So Facebook, Twitter and similar can't just decide to hire cleared employees. They have to go through the process to become government contractors, and then win a contract that requires a clearance.
Also, if you have a clearance and stop working at a job that requires a clearance, your clearance goes away. So once Facebook hires someone with a Top Secret clearance, they no longer have a Top Secret clearance and lose access to the information the article claims Facebook wants.
Even if Facebook, et al manages to go through all the steps to get a contract that requires cleared employees, they can't work on whatever Facebook wants. Those employees have to work on that contract. Those employees also can't just say "Hey, we need to do _____ to stop ______ from hacking us", because that's classified information. The employee can't just share it with everyone at the company.
This author should really have spent a minute or two researching how clearances work before writing this shitty article.
Once you have it you can maintain it if you desire. It's a cost item. Just because you have it doesn't mean you get any access to anything, it merely means the government keeps tabs on a whole list of things on you and you will have some reporting requirements.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This.
In fact, it's usually the government that makes a clearance a condition of a contract. And it's in the best interest of the company to minimize the number of people that need to be covered by a clearance.
A lot of people are looking at this clearance issue from the point of view of selling jet fighters or submarines to the government. Where their primary business is to sell such goods. Facebook and Twitter would be better off not having cleared employees. And developing their own anti-hacking tools and processes completely unencumbered by government secrecy requirements. Unfortunately, the NSA (and other TLAs) have managed to become the gatekeepers of inter company intrusion data. Which they need to keep their systems clean.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sure that no one will blab anything of interest to an adversary government.
Jesus, come on guys. How many "anonymous users" have posted an Ask Slashdot about some arcane details about US cyber security in the past 20 years? Think before you flap your lips, eh?
It wasn't worth it. Constant invasive background checks on you and people close to you; you have to disclose basically everything about your life to the government, such as everywhere you've lived for the last seven years, monthly bank statements for all of your back accounts for the last year, personal information about all of your in-laws, and so on; and you have to constantly take training classes that teach you how to be paranoid and never trust anybody else. I was starting to experience serious anxiety problems, all so that I could work in a concrete bunker that had no connection to the outside world, on dummy terminals that connected to ancient computers that were doing classified work that you're not sure the government even should be doing.
I quit and decided that I'll never work at another job that requires a government clearance, and I've been much happier for it.