Security jobs heat up

Industry observers watching the IT security job market are pointing to up-and-coming areas such as computer forensics and wireless security for the hottest jobs. The better-paying positions overall, however, are going to security professionals with management responsibilities rather than simply technical roles. Those are the findings from separate studies by the SANS Institute and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2), which are professional organizations offering security certification. Their recent reports on how IT security jobs stack up indicate that security is gaining more clout with managers. "To be a chief information security officer takes good technology understanding but also business understanding," says Rolf Moulton, president and CEO of ISC2, which has 40,000 members. To move up the corporate ladder, security professionals must spend more time speaking with their organization's businesspeople, learning their goals and communicating with them in ways they can comprehend, "not [in] the technical gobbledygook that technical people give them," Moulton says. If they don't, they end up "staying in a security club rather than a business club."

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