This article discuss how, as our society becomes more and more reliant on technology, the need to increase the protection on this technology becomes greater as well. This need creates a demand for professionals with certain skills - specifically those in IT Security. This need has literally created a completely new industry and has also pushed businesses and governments to become more aware of just how unsafe the internet can be.
Many employers have begun hiring "ethical hackers" as the article calls them - or "white hat hackers" as discussed in class. The government has begun programs to interest undergrad and graduate students to begin studying in these areas. These programs include tuition reimbursements, scholarship, and on job training. Universities are beginning to offer more and more classes, some are even beginning to offer majors in this area of IT. Raytheon is one such company who, beginning next year, will have over 700 of these professionals working for them. Raytheon has gone as far as to create simulations for their "hackers" to practice and develop their skills, creating a "capture the flag" sort of game. According to the article, "450,000 high-tech college graduates per year are going to be needed so that we can continue to be a technology-driven country." This is a huge number and presents great opportunities for students in this field.
I feel as this industry grows and becomes more attracting to students there is going to be an influx of graduates with a technology degree. This is going to be necessary in order to keep us running with such a high reliance on technology. However, this could also create decreases in other necessary regions of study and possibly even create a shortage in other industries. As more and more students are drawn to the IT field, it is also highly possible to create a surplus and saturate this market. As it stands now there is a great need for those with technical skills and degrees, and there are many programs out there looking for "white hat hackers."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/30/AR2010083001935_2.html
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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This is a rapidly growing field, both in industry and academia. Most of the growth of these academic programs is driven directly by employer demand, including substantial support from the federal government.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how I feel about the growth in this field. I can see some pros and cons of the use of "white-hat hackers". I understand that they may be necessary, but if I was a business owner I would be very careful about hiring them.
ReplyDeleteIt is obviously important to highlight weaknesses in your system so you can improve on them. With improvement, it makes it more difficult for people to compromise the integrity of your information.
But if schools offer classes on hacking, kids can take these classes with the wrong intention. The last thing we need is more people with the tools to hack.
If I was a business owner, I would also be weary of give these individuals on the job training. Teaching them the ins and outs of your system may not pose a threat while they are employed, but if you have to fire them for any reason they could use their skills against you. Anybody else have thoughts on this?
I recently found out myself how important this field is when I was searching for internships last school year. I had been applying for internships in the Fall and I wasn't really getting any replies from employers for interviews. In the Spring semester I decided to add the CAPP major on top of my Economics major and I got interviews with all three companies that I applied too. I ended up at an investment firm and obviously they were really focused on keeping information secure there because if someone messes any little thing up people could lose millions of dollars. The employees always had to shred any information that had the possibility of being corrupted by someone else and IS continuously had to add security patches on to our different databases to protect the information. At the company that I worked at the Information Security department had over 100 hacking attempts per day. Luckily no one had been successful. Investments is probably only a small parcentage of what is driving up the demand for people with technology backgrounds but nonetheless it is an important one.
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