employment market for applied cryptographers?

[Hadmut Danisch]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 02:23:05AM +0100, Adam Back wrote:
> Other explanations? 


Same effect here in Germany.

I'm under the impression that security was never really done
for security reasons, but as a kind of fashion. Do it because
everyone is doing it. It's a problem of the decision makers.

Many companies don't effectively want to have security.
They just want to claim to have. Very few of them are really
interested in having a secure network structure. Decision
makers often still believe that "security" means having
a firewall and a virus filter. 

Meanwhile, virtually anyone has some kind of firewall. 
Everyone has installed some kind of virus scanning software
on the mailserver. That fulfills everything decision makers
know about security. Why waste money for a security engineer?
Why should we have a security engineer to keep the firewall
and the scanner alive, if our normal sysadmin can keep
the software alive as well?

I know several german companies who are explicitely looking
for a security specialist as an employee, but once you 
examine the job offer, you'll find that they don't want
a security engineer who makes their network or software 
secure. They're looking for a "security engineer" just to 
exist and to keep the mouth shut. Just to have an office
with the label "security", but not causing any trouble.

"Security" was never really a requirement, it was some
kind of fashion. Fashions come, fashions go. It's not seen
as causing revenue. So just drop it if times get worse. 

Security has crossed its highest level. It will decrease
from now on. 

Hadmut


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