There were some interesting blog posts from local NoVA infosec bloggers this week, discussing everything from customer service to what IT Security jobs will look like 20 years from now. But since we can’t highlight them all, we picked the best 3 blog posts of the bunch.

As always, be sure to tell us what you think by leaving a comment below. You can also send us a tweet @grecs.

#3 – Revisiting the Golden Rule: Depending on who you talk to, the ‘golden rule’ can mean many different things; to Wade Woolwine however, the golden rule that’s been missing from the security field is customer service. Wade writes, “when you’re involved in security, specifically for a product, or a company who builds products, you should be listening to your customers!” While that can sometimes be difficult for those of us who are a little reserved, Wade’s right: Part of dealing with people is helping them. While it’s easy to think that having a job in security means that you’ll never have to interact with people again, the reality is that you will. Even if you sit alone in a room with a computer for most of your day, chances are you still report to someone, work with someone on projects, or deal with outside companies or customers. Unless you’re one of the 1% of people who somehow manage to avoid all human contact, Wade provides some useful tips on how security professionals can polish their customer service skills. You can view Wade’s full blog post here.   

#2 – Security Careers for the Next Generation: Like everything else in the world, the security field is also changing. It’s unrealistic, as Richard Bejtlich points out, to think that the next generation of security professionals will be able to find the same positions that are available today. Why? According to Bejtlich, it’s due to a shift that’s happening not only in the security field, but the IT field in general. He writes, “I’d like to know which of you manage a 3G network? Chances are if you answer yes, you work for a telecoms provider. How many of you keep the operating system on your Blackberry or iPhone patched? If you answer yes you work for a telecoms provider or Apple.” Basically, Bejtlich believes that the next generation of security and IT professionals will find less variety of jobs to chose from, limited mainly to providers and vendors. You can read the full blog post on Bejtlich’s Tao Security blog.

#1 – A Little Extra Heat: It turns out that the “Cyber Security Coming to a Boil” blog post by Michael Smith of the Guerilla CISO created a fair amount of controversy. In case you didn’t read our post about it last week, Smith talked about the political side of cyber security. (And yes; anytime you involve politics in anything, it is bound to cause controversy). But in an interesting twist, Smith let one of his commenter’s (Ian99) write an entire post explaining why he didn’t agree with Smiths’ blog post. It makes for an interesting read, and it’s nice to see both sides of the issue. You can read Ian99’s response to Smith here.

Well, that’s all for this week; be sure to check back next week for more of the best from local infosec bloggers.

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