Security Work

jank

just a quick question to all ye security guru's out there

how easy or hard is it to break into the security job market

would ye recommend doing a course like this

or go into the system admin type of work for a while and then go for the security type of job
its the area of work i would like to get inot after i finish collage


ps anybody want to take me on in the summer?

Gillie

Worth doing the course.
There is definately a huge market there albeit in f*cking dublin (i'm stuck in the north west). You may wanna look into Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Prevention, Content Checking etc. individually as well.
I am a lowly drone so I can't offer you a job!
My daily routine would include some knowledge of all mentioned above with specific products like:
FW: Checkpoint NG1
Content Checking: Mailsweeper for SMTP
Web Control: Superscout Surf Control.
etc.

I got into this stuff kinda by accident. I'm employed as an IT Technichan.

The course looks good though.
Good luck with that.

zoro

hey - i've a friend doing that course - seems pretty tough!

mind you i'm thinking of doing it when i'm outta dcu, it looks very very interesting!!

Daniel

Gavin

The course is good as an introduction and you get a masters out of it. However, you most certainly will not come out of it as an expert. If you go into it straight after a degree course, you'll find yourself doing a fair bit of repetitive work on operating systems and cryptography. Some interesting stuff however and there is enough free time to be able to spend a bit of extra time on the areas you are interested in.

Gav

crashedmind

I wasn't aware of this course. Looking at the module content it seems quite good - but a bit light on the forensics side given that it's an "MSc in Security and Forensic Computing"
I've read/used several of the recommended books as part of my job - they're the classics that every security person should have on their bookshelf.

On the negative side, I'd question how well recognised this qualification is - there are lots of internationally recognised security certs covering from beginner (CompTIA security+ http://www.comptia.com) to advanced (CISSP www.cissp.com).
To find out more about the industry standard security certs I'd recommend going to www.informit.com (free registration required) and search for "security certification" to get several good/comprehensive articles on the subject.

>"how easy or hard is it to break into the security job market"
The security area is huge - covering everything from eCommerce to crypto research but that doesn't mean there are lots of security jobs.
Given that you mention sysadmin I guess you're interested in network security in particular. If so, then one career path is to work as a sys admin while getting your basic Cisco and Microsoft certs and then doing the security specific certs from these guys. And while your at it you could do the vendor-neutral certs also.

In the early stages of a security career there are very few "purely security" jobs - it's more a case of you do something like sys admin or programming or whatever and as a result you have to be aware of security and its implications. You might find the security side interesting enough to get into it more and more.
As you gain experience you can get into security consultancy where you will focus more on the security side of things but having the benefit of awareness of the sys admin/programming side.

So it's more a case of "easing" into security rather than "breaking" into it.


In summary, guessing that you're still in college then it might be no harm to go
on and do this Masters - it's very difficult to go back to college once you've
started working. At least you'll get an intro to security and can then decide
if that's what you want to do.

If you decide security is for you (it seems it will be a fairly hot area for a while to come), then go on and do the industry standard vendor specific and vendor neutral certs.

Good luck

thesteve

i'm completing a degree in computer science this year and this is exactly the area i want to go into, never even knew this course existed

it does look tough though..... one thing i would say is if you're seriously thinking of doing it, then do it

my girlfriend is doing a masters in DCU also and it's subsidised to 1000 but it won't be that way for long, the full whack is around 5000 so grab the chance whle you can