I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion for CISO A/NZ, which including touching on the subject of this article. Wearing my hat as the Vice President of the Information Technology Professionals Association (ITPA), I joined other seasoned experts to provide input on how to best address strengthening culture around IT and cybersecurity. With the ever-increasing cyber footprint, as well as new technology evolving at pace, we need to ensure professionals in our industry maintain a high level of standards and implement best practices.
I would like to pose some questions to you regarding recruitment and the current marketplace. This topic came up in discussion with a couple of friends who are looking for new jobs; specifically the pros and cons of short-term contracts, job hopping and trying to find a place that fits for both the employee and the employer. I would be interested in hearing your opinion on this — either as an employee or an employer/recruiter — and what you think the solution(s) might be.
It seems that every day there is yet another case of unethical behaviour related to the technology sector. Whether it is the alleged involvement of the Chinese government with Huawei or a case of an ‘insider threat’ (typically a trusted individual doing something that is ethically and/or legally questionable), bad behaviour appears to be rampant throughout our industry. Intuitively, as IT professionals, we turn to technological solutions to try to solve problems. Configuring (higher levels of) encryption, ensuring logical centralised management and updates are all part of the solution. In a perfect world, this would result in all devices being secure and very little ability for ‘bad actors’ to gain unauthorised access to things that they shouldn’t.
A few weeks ago, former Senator Scott Ludlam highlighted an article about a new CCTV and Wi-Fi system being installed by the City of Darwin council. It made several claims including that there would be virtual fences, facial recognition and, most outlandishly, a social credit system like that found in China. The council was forced to refute these claims, denying that the facial recognition feature would be used, and of course that there would be no social credit system.