US Military To Recruit Civilian Cybersecurity Experts 67
An anonymous reader writes The U.S. Army is to create a new cybersecurity division, Cyber Branch 17, and is also considering launching a cyber career track for civilians, according to an announcement made this week by Lt. Gen. Edward C. Cardon. Cardon, who currently heads the U.S. Army's cyber command, ARCYBER, spoke to the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Tuesday about the growing threats and capabilities used in cyber warfare. He argued that creating a cyber career management field for civilians would result in an easier recruitment process, as opposed to recruiting internally and trying to retain the talent, he said. Cardon maintains that recruiting and retaining talent in the field is often challenging, given internal employment constraints surrounding compensation and slow hiring processes.
Compensation delays? Hardly. (Score:3)
"Cardon maintains that recruiting and retaining talent in the field is often challenging, given internal employment constraints surrounding compensation and slow hiring processes."
Ah, internal employment constraints?
This is the same organization that will deploy a SEAL team with a suitcase of cash if the mission calls for it, and treat it like any other expendable item, and yet they can't seem to pull enough cash together to keep up with civilian pay rates.
Talk about your bullshit excuses out of the payroll department...I can't even count how many billions were "lost" in accounting. Ironically, neither can the US GAO.
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By definition, a special forces team is doing something that cannot be done any other way. So of course they have access to whatever they need... otherwise people die.
Civilian employees (and this is not outside contractors), in contrast, are basically tied to the same government hiring processes as the IRS or the Fish and Game department.
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In other words, pay rates will ensure that the government will get what's left after the best and brightest have been hired by the free market.
Ok, so in other words, business as usual.
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Until you guys stop complaining about government and make it cool to join and help, yea.
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I'll start asking what I can do for my country instead of what it can do for me when government and industry lead as examples. I'm not your fucking Boxer.
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Government employees are typically better paid then their private sector counter parts.
The exception is high demand labor of any kind. Someone able to run a company as CEO is going to get more money in the private sector than in the government's employ. However if you're a paper pushing cubical monkey then you will get better pay and job security in the government.
The issue is whenever people say the government should play some employee more they tend to mean ALL of them. And that's neither reasonable nor s
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The exception is high demand labor of any kind. Someone able to run a company as CEO is going to get more money in the private sector than in the government's employ.
I don't think we're talking about overpaid suits here, we're talking about engineers and other technical people. The government is not known to pay them well either.
All those office workers are being paid better in DC than anywhere else in the country.
So basically a bunch of incompetent paper-pushers are being given largesse by the rest of th
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It doesn't fucking matter
Jesus Autistic Christ. >__
The point was "high demand labor"... which includes anyone that has special skills that are not easily trained to acquired in the market.
I gave an example a CEO because that is the most extreme example. But that same example also works for medical professionals, computer professionals, engineering professionals, scientific professionals... and anyone else that has skills that are rare in the general population.
The problem is that the government has pay g
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The problem is that the government has pay grades. Fixed tiers of compensation. Those tiers work fine for most people. They're fucking useless for anyone exceptional that must be paid significantly more.
Why? Regular large corporations do pretty much the same thing with their engineers, and it works fine. They have "Engineer I", "Engineer II", "Engineer III", "Senior Engineer I", "Principal Engineer", etc. When someone gets promoted to a higher level, that puts them in a higher pay grade. Yeah, the corpo
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The tiers in corporations are more guidelines. In the government they're pretty inflexible. Which is what the DoD is saying.
If it were really the same then the private sector would enjoy no competitive advantage over the government for competing for top tier labor.
They do. The tier system works quite well for the majority of labor... if anything it over pays most people dramatically. But for top tier labor it underpays them and so they don't accept the job.
As to you eating every last dick, you are attemptin
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Put my post on pastbin because /. was rejecting the post for no reason.
http://pastebin.com/EazdNjdG [pastebin.com]
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If you don't get the employees you need for other parts of the organization to work properly, then people die (because the military missions fail). You don't get the employees you need if you don't pay enough.
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By definition, a special forces team is doing something that cannot be done any other way. So of course they have access to whatever they need... otherwise people die.
Civilian employees (and this is not outside contractors), in contrast, are basically tied to the same government hiring processes as the IRS or the Fish and Game department.
And as long as they treat an elite hacker the same as a fucking fish and game warden, they'll end up with the same lack of talent they have today. And they'll be here again next year, trying to recruit, just as they were a decade ago at Black Hat.
Ironically, they don't consider a good hacker as a tool that can get things done that cannot be done any other way...
Re:Compensation delays? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Seals are part of the Navy. And due to Sequestration, the Army will lose about 70,000 shortly.
The problem with accounting is indeed a problem. One doesn't not wave a magic wand and declare there to be accounting. DoD is vast, and they've never had a real audit. Their first real audit is coming due shortly, it took them years to prepare for it because new accounting systems had to be built to handle it.
And when it comes to money wasted, the biggest problem is Congress. DoD figures it has about 25% more physical plant than it needs, but it cannot cut it because it requires closing bases in congressional districts and Congress won't let them do that. They do go though a BRAC process about every 5 years and whack what they can, but Congress won't let them whack enough.
That said, the Air Force is easily the most stuck in the past. Their whizzy new planes are more or less overkill for Daesh. The A-10 is perfect for that, but the Air Force is tasked with countering China and Russia which have been putting money into advanced airplanes. Both have been putting new money into just about everything. This bodes trouble for the U.S. and the Biden Doctrine of bending over first, thinking if they see our a-holes, they'll realize we mean then no harm. So we get the Ukraine problem and China building a new island and new airstrip in the S. China Sea 1000 miles from any Chinese territory. The U.S. does nothing because the Biden Doctrine declares that if we smile a lot, the rest of the world will like U.S....unfortunately for the U.S., its allies that rely on it won't. So they too are starting to spend more on defense. The end result will be a lot of powder kegs splattered across the world that could go off for stupid reasons because men do stupid things. And that will force the U.S. defense budget higher in the long run, presuming the U.S. doesn't take one in the neck because it ignored an existential threat (N. Korea nuking LA, Iran nuking Washington (they are able to put satellites in space which you need to send one to Washington, etc.).
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presuming the U.S. doesn't take one in the neck because it ignored an existential threat (N. Korea nuking LA, Iran nuking Washington (they are able to put satellites in space which you need to send one to Washington, etc.).
Those aren't existential threats, in fact, if you timed the hit on DC right, you'd probably get rid of the worst problem America has in one fell swoop. Or you'd just piss off America and get it riled up and ready to smash face, like taking a swing at Rocky. Sure, it might seem like you've done harm to the champ, but then you realize there's a freight train of hurt coming your way and there's no charge for delivery.
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That's a load of crap, front to back.
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Its worse then what he describes. Currently the NSA / USCYBERCOM will try to hire graduates from college at at GS-9. That is 45k to 55K a year. For all but the Air Force, the new hires are being stationed at NSA Washington, meaning they will be trying to make due, and start their families at this salary, paying off student debt (NSA does not participate in the federal student loan forgiveness program), and save up for a house. In this area a cheap one bedroom apartment can run you around $1500 a month.
T
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What this seems to be largely about though is restructuring their internal codes. Pretty much every job in the military or government, civilian or otherwise, has a particular job code and career field, from park ranger to law enforcement
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It's a cute reference to the fact that the 'hacker culture' is full of dope smokers, transvestites, leftists, etc; and the security clearance process itself (if they would even be allowed through it) turns them off so much that the best people either don't apply or are easily hired away to commercial companies (ie: san francisco startups). And in all honesty, having an employer that doesn't give the slightest shit about your personal life makes you far less bribe-able than one that has a lifestyle gauntlet
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The majority of major, targeted hacks (rather than just sweeping the net for vulnerabilities) - aka, the kind of stuff that the US military cares about - involves sending emails or making phone calls and introducing yourself as Bob from IT, and sorry to bother you but there's a problem that we need to discuss with you, but first a couple questions...
They don't need script kiddies, they need social engineers. Question number one in the job interview should be "Is your native language Russian, Chinese, Farsi,
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No, that's the beauty of global outsourcing: all they need's a Hindu accent. "Hello, I am being Sanj - I mean, Bob, from IT. I am needing you to be visiting TeamViewer to be fixing the Windows errors on your terrorist cell's PC..."
More seriously, I thought the offensive hacking was more an NSA/CIA operation: Army cybersecurity woul
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Social engineering is still the most common targeted attack vector. Humans are the weakest links in most secure systems, there is nearly always someone no matter how well trained and warned that will fall for well thought out social engineering tactics.
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AI-based hacking is norm for most states, not teams of humans. Source code is obtained around the world, some stolen, some open-source, etc., then passed into machine learning classifiers that identify common problems. These identified areas are then passed to another machine learning system that attempts to generate code to exploit the error. Its a monte carlo/genetic algorithm based system. On success, it is added to a library of attack code, along with some tools to perform fingerprinting.
Then it can
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It's actually stunning how many people are self proclaimed hacking experts and yet seem to get most of their knowledge about hacking from sensationalist news and Hollywood.
Great idea! (Score:1)
Just look at how well hiring external contractors worked for the NSA!
Look, the military only works if it's staffed by the brainwashed, because its primary goals are not beneficial to humanity.
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The main problem is that the "spirit" of hacking is diametrically opposite of what the military is like. Not that that "spirit" mattered much anymore, but it's still why most people get into the area. They usually stay for the money, Which is another thing that works against the military...
So the military is neither attractive to new people who want to get into the field, nor to seasoned veterans who learned just what salaries they can ask for.
Plus, despite money, most "hackers" still have some kind of mora
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Just look at how well hiring external contractors worked for the NSA!
Snowden was a contractor, but Manning was a uniformed soldier.
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Stop Microsoft operating systems from being used.
FTFY. Stuxnet didn't care about "internet".
Hiring BACK in (Score:1)
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You mean, like, both of them?
The combination you describe isn't that common. Especially if you add "good, skilled AND not earning more than thrice the offered sum in the real world".
Enemy combatants (Score:1)
So, enemy combatants then.
Good luck. (Score:3)
All Cybersecurity guys I know will not tolerate testosterone fueled chain of command bullshit that is the backbone of the US military.
Exactly how do they think they will control and indoctrinate these people? Most are smart enough to know that most of the problems are CAUSED by the United States, and when ordered to do something unethical, they will say "go to hell"
So I am guessing threats of imprisonment is their motivator?
If your job doesn't suck enough already..., (Score:2)
Asshole Officers (Score:1)
Asshole Officers are the issue. You can't pay me enough to work there. Well, perhaps you could $300K - yes?
My conscience is another issue. I've read the US Constitution, including the bill of rights. I've also read the bible and quran and have studied Buddhists traditions. I feel that spying is wrong. If we are at war - fine. Until war is formally declared, infiltrating any other organization - inside or outside the USA is wrong.
I come from a military family. Dad was a pilot and I saw him being an ass
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Sometimes it's useful to know in advance that the bullets are going to start flying.
See also: Pearl Harbor.
From the civilian cyber-security? (Score:1)
Might work for them (Score:2)
Most "cybersecurity experts" probably want nothing to do with the military. Look at the average set of comments from any Snowden leak and you'll find that anyone you would want doing this kind of work has a real problem with authority. In the military, authority is what you get. No matter how high up the food chain you are, there's always someone telling you what to do. Combine this with mandatory combat training, mandatory physical fitness testing/standards and tons of bureaucracy, and you have a job that
Soldiers have the up or out rules that limit there (Score:2)
Soldiers have the up or out rules that limit there you don't want to lose a good tech guy who does not want to go management or be forced out of the unit due to there rank being to high.
It needs to be civilians based. Also some tech people may have a hard time with boot camp and I not just talking about the PT part of it. Also people with disabilities who can do a desk job but can't do boot camp as well.
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That's the reason I got out. If they still had this [wikipedia.org] I *might* have stayed in longer. They gave me a direct order to go to the NCO academy because I'd refused previously 'offered' slots and I was the senior E-4 in my brigade. So, I attend, kick the shit out of the course (which is not difficult for your average slashdotter if
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Soldiers have the up or out rules that limit there you don't want to lose a good tech guy who does not want to go management or be forced out of the unit due to there rank being too high
Probably the best solution if they insisted upon the new "cyber warrriors" being a member of the service would be direct appointment as warrant officers [wikipedia.org]. There is less focus on up or out and the rank is specifically designated as a technical position so there is no risk of being forced into management like with the higher enlisted and officer ranks.
I told you so ... (Score:2)
This supports my theory that for any group of special talents within an organization that involves digital, there are WAY more people outside that organization than within it and that statistics demands that the odds are that that outside population has a whole lot more smart people.
There are WAY more people who are not military. Among those extant, there WILL be some people who are more talented than the military. Those people either have jobs or are making money as black hats.
The military recognizes that,
ARCYBER (Score:1)