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McAfee Finds That Gamers Are Strong Candidates for Cybersecurity Jobs (venturebeat.com)
To beat cybercriminals, McAfee suggests in a new report that gamers may be the key candidates for cybersecurity jobs. From a report: The Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity company said it did a survey of 300 senior security managers and 650 security professionals at major corporations. And 78 percent of respondents said that the current generation entering the work force -- those that grew up playing video games -- are stronger candidates for cybersecurity roles. The report suggests that gamers, those engaged and immersed in online competitions, may be the logical next step to plugging the skills gap.
92 percent of respondents believe that gaming affords players experience and skills critical to cybersecurity threat hunting: logic, perseverance, an understanding of how to approach adversaries and a fresh outlook compared to traditional cybersecurity hires. Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience. 72 percent of respondents say hiring experienced video gamers into the IT department seems like a good way to plug the cybersecurity skills gap.
92 percent of respondents believe that gaming affords players experience and skills critical to cybersecurity threat hunting: logic, perseverance, an understanding of how to approach adversaries and a fresh outlook compared to traditional cybersecurity hires. Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience. 72 percent of respondents say hiring experienced video gamers into the IT department seems like a good way to plug the cybersecurity skills gap.
Equifax has a job opening for a Music Major to manage their computer security
Bath salts. Just avoid them.
Life is not for the lazy.
90% of my interview candidates can't articulate the difference between public key and symmetric encryption. I'd probably hire them if they could play Zork, and knew the difference between the two.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Gamers are like water flowing downhill -- they _will_ find the most efficient path. Why people are surprised about this is beyond me.
Unless you play hardcore, the entire risk:reward in games is a complete joke, especially with the grindfests that modern gaming has devolved into.
i.e.
Do some boring-menial-grind for X hours for a % of phat loot -- oh wait, that sounds exactly like a job.
Public security SWATters to call in the SWAT teams. Perfect fit.
Isn't that precisely how cybersecurity works as well? Good hiring strategy!
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Surprisingly, the best ones are actually French Literature bachelor degree holders, followed closely by those with various foreign languages (other than their own).
The problem is that the vast majority of people who apply for such positions are gamers. As my gaming friends worldwide could tell you, it is very possible to be both.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
AI is really good at playing computer games. So if AI has the same skills set that cybersecurity workers have, their jobs are soon to be automated out of existence.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience
Except those people's resumes never make it past the HR filter because they don't list any specific training or experience.
I'm a gamer, but in my experience most people who game enough to be called "gamers" are lucky if they aren't too high to make it to work. Above and beyond the fact that, much like me, they are often not the most socially well adjusted people. Since about half of most jobs in security industries involve writing reports for customers and presenting those reports to customers, I don't see how your average gamer fits that bill.
And you don't have to put up with the stench!
Obviously, just look at how most of them will never breed. Efficiency at it's best.
And 78 percent of respondents said that the current generation entering the work force -- those that grew up playing video games -- are stronger candidates for cybersecurity roles.
Firstly, what respondents say isn't necessarily the objective truth. Secondly, just who are they stronger than? It should be bleedin' obvious that just on average you'd expect gamers to be stronger candidates than the average person in the street, simply by dint of probably knowing a bit more about computers.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Been playing video games pretty hard core for the last 20 years, and I'm already in the IT field self-taught with intermediate to advanced knowledge of cybersecurity as it is. Where's all of these managers offering me a job? >.
It's worth pointing out that Mcafee, a supposed "security company" who no competent security professional would rely upon, said this.
It does explain a lot, now that I think of it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
They'd be ideal in marketing too, similar as it is to the spray and pray strategy employed by many gamers.
Requiem for the American Dream
... I was a serious gamer. I devoted considerable time to the few console games I could afford to buy. After so many replays you start looking for "alternative paths" to just running through the main story/plot/purpose. It's a creative venture to have fun in ways the original content creators may not have had in mind.
Eventually I acquired a game genie for the NES and that opened a new world of possibilities (for those that don't know, this was, more or less, another cartridge that the original NES game would seat into so that it could intercept and modify certain memory contents on the fly). Unfortunately, the interface for the game genie is rather opaque and doesn't really explain much about the inner workings of the game. But some years later I got a game shark for the N64, and this probably changed my life. Unlike the game genie, you actually entered real memory addresses, and not only that, but you could pause the game and explore memory contents. I was teaching myself computer architecture and assembly (before university) to have more and better fun, from whatever cobbled together sources I could find on the internet at the time (long ascii only text documents, probably from zophar ...) . This got me an early start into my computer programming career, and at least laid a foundation for most of the first few years of computer engineering degree (though I didn't really pursue it as much as perhaps I should have ...)
I'm sure things are different nowadays with the rise of cell phone gaming (less access to internals), but I think the way of thinking is the same: What is a creative way around an arbitrary problem?
I imagine there will always be a large overlap between creative problem solvers (gamers) and people that need to work on abstract problems (the more fun parts of security and programming).
Gamers are the exact opposite of technical users!
Most âoegamersâ canâ(TM)t write software and donâ(TM)t possess the critical thinking required for anything more advanced than operating a microwave oven.
Then again, McAfee said it, so who cares.
Former Equifax “Chief Security Officer” Susan Mauldin has a bachelor’s degree and a master of fine arts degree in music composition from the University of Georgia. Look where "no expertise" got them (and us). Hey, let's hire butchers to be surgeons too, I mean they cut things after all, so it's sort of related!
...92 percent of respondents are fucking idiots. Playing games doesn't make you a better hacker...writing code does.
Young, tech-savvy people prepared to spend 20 hours a day at a screen might be good at tech jobs? Well yeah, as long as you don't expect them to spend hours a day doing free study - gaming is time consuming after all.
Seems all these articles these days are getting overly redundant in an unnecessary and redundant way. Here's the basic formula:
$COMPANY can't find enough cheap workers and comes up with $STUPID_IDEA to try to explain why competent people still cost $TOO_MUCH.
As a bonus for this article, we can have fun pointing out obvious lurking variables because they obviously don't realize things may not be as they seem.
..and enjoys raep.
Fuck that guy.
I'm in my early 40s, grew up playing video games and I, as well as many others in my age range are good security analysts.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The same case could be made for TV or bicycling.
iirc he claimed to be able hack something and then it showed up that it was a con.. so is it cheating what gaming teaches you?
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All those years of downloading pirated games of strange sites and learning to avoid virus/malware/ransomware is finally be paying of for these gamers!
I think you're making an important point and I think the people in the article were probably not thinking about the casual gamer that just casually enjoys the intended challenges set by the developer, but rather the competitive gamers and speed runners that spend hours and hours trying to figure out if you can exploit the physics of the game in unexpected ways or maybe abuse some map geometry in ways not immediately apparent.. or even just completely break the sequence of the game and/or clip out of bounds if it speeds things up... and maybe even the gamers who write TAS-scripts to proof-of-concept tricks and exploits that are too hard for any human to perform reliably (eg. arbitrary reprogramming of something like a SNES just by using regular gameplay of Super Mario).
Where do these jobs live? Are they virtually a job? Are there more than 1 of them?