DHS Hiring Spree
The DHS is indeed committing to hiring 1000 clearable US citizens over the next three years. If you’re interested, you can “attend” their cyber job fair:
http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/careers/cyberjobfair
They are looking to fill these types of roles:
- Cyber Incident Response
- Vulnerability Detection and Assessment
- Networks and Systems Engineering
- Cyber Risk and Strategic Analysis
- Intelligence and Investigation
I’m glad that this amount of hiring is happening, but I’m still unconvinced that this will bring DHS (and the American people) 300 high-quality cybersecurity professionals per year. I’m guessing 80 to 90 percent of the hires in any given year will be trainable Computer Science and/or Computer Engineering B.Sc. students — those who can gradually obtain cybersecurity skills over the course of their govt. careers. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that in three years, the US cybersecurity defense posture and capabilities won’t be measurably improved.
One thousand extra people does not translate directly into an improvement — not at the rate at which network traffic flows, attacks and exploits of software vulnerabilities happens, the complexity of real systems software increases, new technologies come on line, etc. Most of the roles that DHS is seeking seem to be more on the strategy end of things rather than the tactics or operational side of the house — and I see that as a good thing, but it’s easy to misuse a sudden influx of manpower on the tactical side, even if they’re initially meant to have a strategic, forward-looking focus.
