How to get better security people

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

According to a recent salary survey telephone companies have some
of the lowest paid information security professionals in comparison
with other technology corporations, federal government, or financial
companies.  When the US Transportation Security Administration (aka,
the agency in charge of airport screeners) is paying their computer
security people more than telephone companies, its hard for phone
companies to attact top security talent.

Customers need to let companies know that security and responsiveness
affects their purchasing decisions.  I think some companies are getting
the message.  But in today's market, with tight budgets and layoffs,
security is often viewed as overhead.  A lot of providers are lucky
if they have one network engineer who does security stuff in her spare
time.  Full-fledge security departments are rare.


On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Eric Whitehill wrote:
> UUNet, by far is the best.  I've had mixed results with Sprint.  A couple
> of years ago I had to deal with Hurricane Electric and the tech was really good about
> it - he added in the ACL I needed right over the phone.
>
> Also, I know of a couple  providers in the upper midwest that are pretty
> good at working with DOS stuff.  Email me off list if you are
> interested.