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Comments
Flash Poll: Critical Skills Gap In Threat Intelligence
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Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
6/23/2014 | 7:40:43 AM
Re: The Team Rules -- jack of all trades
@RobertMcDougal 

You make a great point about specialization. And I suspect your experience -- wearing many security hats-- is fairly typical.  As InfoSec continues to mature and evolve along with the threat landscape, there would definitely seem to be a need for a core group of specialists within the SOC. especially in larger companies. Is anyone aware of that type of organizational structure now?
Robert McDougal
Robert McDougal,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/22/2014 | 9:39:17 AM
Re: The Team Rules
To add to your point, in my experience organizations attempt to cover all areas of security with as few people as possible.  This practice forces the security professionals in those enterprises to become a jack of all trades and master of none.  

We need to do a better job of educating management of the value of security specialization.  Unlike, other areas of IT such as system administratrion or network management you cannot get away with only hiring generalists.  
RetiredUser
RetiredUser,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 7:35:03 PM
The Team Rules
Is it possible this partially reflects the habit of some companies to keep dropping hats on the same tech with the idea of saving money?  I would argue, especially in enterprise-scale organizations, that security is a team op, and that you couldn't expect one or two people to fill every role, from forensics examiner to systems and network auditor, or to be a perimeter protection analyst, incident handler and intrusion analyst all in one, or even jump from pen tester to reverse engineer, and then secure software programmer/auditor.  A solid security team should break the load up, with each member specializing, though able to switch hats at any given moment. 

To the point of keeping up, every security manager should be daily, if not hourly, reading sites like Dark Reading and Packet Storm, or Infosecurity and keeping tabs on exploit and malware databases, looking for trends, new tech and risks, and assigning one of the team to attack critical topics in order to learn, master and defend against them.  All this requires bodies, smart and enthusiastic ones, and the willingness to do the time, the curiosity to read on beyond the news and exploit titles, and the hacker drive to see a solution through, or to beat the opponent at their own game.
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 5:25:24 PM
Its up to us to fill in the gaps
It also needs to be in the priority of the Information Security professional to fill the gaps within their organization. For example, the forensics being the most lacking was true for my organization as well. However, my coworker and I sought to put this into our security initatives. He having a degree in forensics and myself having done masters work in forensics saw it necessary to develop a process which we documented and have the proper tools and protocols in place to have a successful forensics procedure. As security professionals we need to be enthiusiastic and proactive when it comes to filling in the gaps we perceive our organizations to have.
Randy Naramore
Randy Naramore,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 3:53:49 PM
Re: Critical Skills Gap
I personally believe that self study is the majority of what employees get in the realm of training. Much cheaper and the class size is smaller.
Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
6/20/2014 | 3:03:02 PM
Re: Critical Skills Gap
It truly is. It's a job in and of itself just to stay current. Curious to know how much of this is self-directed and how much support you get from your company?
Randy Naramore
Randy Naramore,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 2:46:36 PM
Critical Skills Gap
Informative. As I have said before this shows why it is quite an task to be at a functional level in all of these disciplines.


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