Mon, Feb 25, 2002 page18

• Security the next growth area in IT

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  It's obvious: Opportunities in the information technology industry are pretty scarce these days.

  "Right now the industry is flat," notes Thomas Pilsch, assistant dean for continuing education and director of the Georgia Tech Computer Training Facility. "I always judge it by each week. I go through checking the [help wanted] section, and I judge the health of the industry by the number of IT jobs. It used to be two, three, four or five pages of ads in 2000. Now they're down to a few columns. There's not that many jobs available."

  The decline is no surprise with the economy's malaise, widespread technology layoffs and the collapse of dotcoms, Pilsch says.

  But there is a bright side. In the days ahead, the place to find IT job security will be in the information security sector of the industry, Pilsch and other experts predict.

  "Information security is going to lead the IT workplace recovery," Pilsch says, because its focus on business continuity, disaster recovery and data protection is key to ongoing corporate risk management operations.

  A more acute focus on these areas is "part of what's going on around us, and the events of 9-11 pounded that home to us," Pilsch says.

  Data and information can be vulnerable in any number of ways, Pilsch says. "You can lose your power. A hacker can come in and corrupt your data, or a hacker can steal it and sell it. It could be a fire, or a terrorist attack next door can shut you down. Many, many things can happen."

  The tragedy of the September terrorist attacks brought into stark relief the need to protect the nation's information infrastructure and to have contingency plans. Though IT insiders, federal and local government officials and educators have been discussing ways to better secure the nation's computer systems and information infrastructure, the demand for workers trained in information security is more pressing now than ever.

  "There's only enough qualified information security people to fill one in 12 jobs that are out there or will be out there," says Pilsch, relating a common estimate of the worker shortage.

  The demand is urgent. "Security can no longer be an afterthought," says Phyllis Schneck, president of InfraGard Atlanta and co-chair of the InfraGard national executive board. InfraGard, the partnership between the private sector and the FBI, was set up to enable the exchange of information between the two, to protect the nation's critical infrastructures, including computer networks and systems.

  "Never before has there been such an urgency to protect networks, and this is because this is the first time in history that we have been this connected. Our biggest convenience is our biggest vulnerability," Schneck says of the interlocking relationships of data systems.

  In many ways, the industry is playing catch-up on security, as the education of technologists demonstrates.

  "The way technology is learned, first you learn how to build a network or how to build a server. Currently security is not taught as part of that process," explains Thomas Akin, director of the Southeast Cybercrime Institute, part of the continuing education division at Kennesaw State University. "Security is something that you learn after the fact, which means there are a lot of people running servers, running networks and active databases who are not trained in security."

  Therein lies opportunity. "Adding security skills to your resume is going to give [you] a huge leg up and a way into even non-security positions," Akin contends. "When you learn information security, you don't have to go into an information security job, but basically that's going to benefit you in any technology position you enter."

  Securing information security training is key.

  "You cannot jump straight into information security," says Akin. "Information security is basically a specialty that people that are already into information technology can use to increase their value by developing this skill."

  That's good news for current and would-be technologists, Akin says. It's easier for people who already have a technology background to make the move into information security.
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