Security’s Nightmare: Negative Unemployment

Unemployment is bad, so negative unemployment must be good, right?  Um, no.  (I’ll steal a line from Douglas Adams: “It’s unpleasantly like being drunk” … “What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” … “Well, ask a glass of water.”)  Security as an industry is short-staffed – critically so, and it’s getting worse.

This came into sharp focus with the recent suit between MasterCard and Nike.  I’ve no comment on the specifics of the case, but the general lesson is clear: security geeks are in desperately short supply.  When I think of where this industry was just a few years ago, it would have been preposterous to imagine two household name, world class companies unleashing lawyers over such a fracas.

This is why security automation is such a big deal.  Security teams everywhere are drowning in unaddressed, basic problems.  We know plenty about what we need to do, but we just can’t get it all done – there aren’t enough fingers on the keyboards.  (Anyone remember “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T”?)  We need machines to prioritize all the signal overload; there’s no other way to make headway.