> Outside of the DoD, Information Security is in no better condition than System Administration.
Give it a minute. All the big commercial players that want DoD contracts must hire certified people now. General Dynamics, Northrup, Lockheed, etc. > how can you impose any verifiable educational requiements when so many in the field are completely self-taught? and how would you punish people for violating ethics without the ability to prevent people from working in the field?. Well you can't punish anyone without laws right? That's the lives Professionals live. Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, CPAs, etc. They have a structure of laws and ethical practices that dictate their good standing in their chosen profession both ethically and legally. > I view any call for rules that would have prevented me from entering the field with deep suspicion. Bingo David. Which is why I am not sure that "Professionalization" is really the road forward. > I ran out of money for college back in '94 when I was takinga CS/Math couble major. Deom there, I have no verifiable education (mostly self-taught, conference training, a smidge of vendor training) and am in the security sub-field of ssytem administration. Verifiable only in the context of teaching. Not in charging actual money. It's a high ideal, and reality will probably fall short, but it's worthy of effort. > This is why I think that looking at the automotive field is a much better fit for comparison to system administration than the others that have been mentioned. It's the one other field that I can think of that allows completely self-taught people to work alongside of formally trained people. For sure. We need to preserve that aspect of this field. > So I think trying to impose rules that would eliminate the vast majority of people from the field is a waste of time. Has it been a waste of time for Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, etc? School costs (the business side of education) certainly haven't dampened the number of students seeking the education. Do you think the quality of Doctors has risen since formal education and internship programs were instituted? Look at me! Playing both sides of the fence on this issue. :-) On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 3:24 AM, David Lang <da...@lang.hm> wrote: > On Sat, 11 Jul 2015, Joseph Kern wrote: > > We can look to the Information Assurance / Computer Security field as an >> example of what career has leap frogged us poor Systems Bricklayers into a >> full blown profession. They have already established an occupation, >> training schools, university level degrees (M.S. in I.A. anyone?), >> established local associations, established national associations, and >> introduced codes of ethics, the Federal Government has already established >> laws concerning employment within the US DoD (DoD 8570.1-M) for >> Information >> Assurance Professionals (indeed ALL system and network jobs require at >> least two certifications now within the DoD). >> > > Outside of the DoD, Information Security is in no better condition than > System Administration. It takes no certification to get a security job and > frequently the experience consists of knowing how to break into things (and > the fact that so many in the field are ones who have broken in to other > people's systems and see nothing wrong with doign so makes me seriously > question the overall ethics of the sub-field) > > System Administration as a Profession (as described in the formal sense of >> Profession as described above) has taken a seat of mistrust in my mind >> over >> the last few years; the ability for a young woman or man to go from >> flipping burgers to desktop support tech to enterprise engineer, without >> accruing college debt (indeed, actually earning money instead), is the >> /primary/ economic strength of our career field, I believe a large factor >> in our growth, and something which we should never forget in our march to >> Professionalization. >> >> The struggle we all face in determining this path of education is that >> none >> of us have ever taken the same road to understanding, and we all find >> ourselves at some point in our career paraphrasing Louie Armstrong: "Man, >> if >> you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know". Any education or >> certification program we undertake must focus on fundamentals; systems >> analysis, signals analysis, business analysis, statistical analysis, >> practical teamwork & project management, and even a little information >> theory. To stretch the Jazz metaphor a little further, these are the >> harmonic scales which we must practice everyday to remain competent no >> matter what instrument we play. >> >> This education must be accessible, verifiable, and fundamentally stable >> (in >> comparison with changing technology). We must not be another vendor based >> education track, or be focused on teaching someone how to use the command >> line. We /must/ be focused on creating men and women who understand >> systems >> and signals holistically and intuitively. This is a hard problem worth >> solving. >> > > how can you impose any verifiable educational requiements when so many in > the field are completely self-taught? and how would you punish people for > violating ethics without the ability to prevent people from working in the > field?. > > If we do want to say that eventually people need to be licensed to work as > a system administrator, what is everyone's vision of what jobs should > require such a license? does running a website for a mom-and-pop store > require such a license/ what about if you run a mail server anf forum for > such a business? what about running something for your local church (or > pick some other charitable organization? how large must a company be before > they are only allowed to employ "certified" or "professional" system > administrators? what should happen to "uncertified" system administrators > who helped build the company when the company becomes large enough that > they are no longer allowed to be employyed there? > > > I ran out of money for college back in '94 when I was takinga CS/Math > couble major. Deom there, I have no verifiable education (mostly > self-taught, conference training, a smidge of vendor training) and am in > the security sub-field of ssytem administration. > > I view any call for rules that would have prevented me from entering the > field with deep suspicion. > > since there are so few formal system administrator educational paths, > almost everyone in the field is giong to be self taught to a large degree. > So I think trying to impose rules that would eliminate the vast majority of > people from the field is a waste of time. > > This is why I think that looking at the automotive field is a much better > fit for comparison to system administration than the others that have been > mentioned. It's the one other field that I can think of that allows > completely self-taught people to work alongside of formally trained people. > > David Lang > > >> >> >> On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Aleksey Tsalolikhin < >> atsaloli.t...@gmail.com >> >>> wrote: >>> >> >> On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 4:51 PM, David Lang <da...@lang.hm> wrote: >>> >>> >>>> This being said, other than the nebulous "no longer being looked down >>>> on" >>>> criteria, what do you think needs to happen (and what could any >>>> organization of practitioners do to achieve these goals, ignoring for >>>> the >>>> sake of discussion the small size and budget of LOPSA)? >>>> >>> >>> >>> IMHO, it comes down to training/education. >>> >>> Profession: a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged >>> training and a formal qualification. >>> ( >>> >>> https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%27s+a+profession >>> ) >>> >>> A profession arises when any trade or occupation transforms itself >>> through *"the >>> development of formal qualifications based upon education, >>> apprenticeship, >>> and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with powers to admit >>> and discipline members, and some degree of monopoly >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly> rights."*[7] >>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#cite_note-7> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#Formation >>> >>> Education is the key to professionalization. >>> >>> JESA submissions are due August 15th: >>> https://www.usenix.org/jesa/call-for-articles >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> Discuss@lists.lopsa.org >>> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >>> This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators >>> http://lopsa.org/ >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> -- Joseph A Kern joseph.a.k...@gmail.com
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