For Telecom Workers, Burst Of Bubble Takes Heavy Toll (was: employment market for applied cryptographers?)

2002-08-21 Thread Steve Schear
[Because of its relevance and since most list members are probably not WSJ subscribers, I've taken the liberty of posting the entire article. sds] From the Wall Street Journal -- For Telecom Workers, Burst Of Bubble Takes Heavy Toll By REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN RICHARDSON, Texas -- Two years ago,

For Telecom Workers, Burst Of Bubble Takes Heavy Toll (was: employment market for applied cryptographers?)

2002-08-20 Thread Steve Schear
[Because of its relevance and since most list members are probably not WSJ subscribers, I've taken the liberty of posting the entire article. sds] From the Wall Street Journal -- For Telecom Workers, Burst Of Bubble Takes Heavy Toll By REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN RICHARDSON, Texas -- Two years ago,

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-18 Thread Adam Shostack
On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 01:46:09AM -0400, dmolnar wrote: | | | On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, John Kelsey wrote: | | Also, designing new crypto protocols, or analyzing old ones used in odd | ways, is mostly useful for companies that are offering some new service on | the net, or doing some wildly new

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-17 Thread John Kelsey
At 12:57 PM 8/16/02 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: ... I've seen very high rates of unemployment among people of all walks of life in New York of late -- I know a lot of lawyers, systems administrators, secretaries, advertising types, etc. who are out of work or have been underemployed for a

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-17 Thread John Kelsey
At 04:21 AM 8/16/02 -0400, dmolnar wrote: ... Don't forget schedule pressure, the overhead of bringing in a contractor to do crypto protocol design, and the not-invented-here syndrome. I think all of these contribute to keeping protocol design in-house, regardless of the technical skill of the

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread dmolnar
On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Adam Back wrote: failure to realise this issue or perhaps just not caring, or lack of financial incentives to care on the part of software developers. Microsoft is really good at this one. The number of times they re-used RC4 keys in different protocols is amazing!

CDR: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread Matthew X
Other explanations? Statistics? Sample-of-one stories? Adam -- yes, still employed in sofware security industry; and in addition have been doing crypto consulting since 97 (http://www.cypherspace.net/) if you have any interesting applied crypto projects; reference commissions paid. The problems

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread Adam Shostack
Hey, this is off-topic for DRM-punks! ;) more seriously: I think the fundamental issue is that crypto doesn't really solve many business problems, and it may solve fewer security problems. See Bellovin's work on how many vulnerabilities would be blocked by strong crypto. The buying public can't

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread Perry E. Metzger
Adam Back [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Are there any more definitive security industry stats? Are applied crypto people suffering higher rates of unemployment than general application programmers? (From my statistically too small sample of acquaintances it might appear so.) Hard to say.

RE: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread despot
Having devoted security personnel is a low priority at most companies. General engineers will be tasked with figuring out how to incorporate security and cryptography into products. I have visited many a company where I am talking to a room full of very sharp engineers, but there is a fundamental

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread dmolnar
On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Adam Back wrote: failure to realise this issue or perhaps just not caring, or lack of financial incentives to care on the part of software developers. Microsoft is really good at this one. The number of times they re-used RC4 keys in different protocols is amazing!

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread Perry E. Metzger
Adam Back [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Are there any more definitive security industry stats? Are applied crypto people suffering higher rates of unemployment than general application programmers? (From my statistically too small sample of acquaintances it might appear so.) Hard to say.

Re: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread Adam Shostack
Hey, this is off-topic for DRM-punks! ;) more seriously: I think the fundamental issue is that crypto doesn't really solve many business problems, and it may solve fewer security problems. See Bellovin's work on how many vulnerabilities would be blocked by strong crypto. The buying public can't

RE: employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-16 Thread despot
Having devoted security personnel is a low priority at most companies. General engineers will be tasked with figuring out how to incorporate security and cryptography into products. I have visited many a company where I am talking to a room full of very sharp engineers, but there is a fundamental

employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-15 Thread Adam Back
On the employment situation... it seems that a lot of applied cryptographers are currently unemployed (Tim Dierks, Joseph, a few ex-colleagues, and friends who asked if I had any leads, the spate of recent security consultant .sigs, plus I heard that a straw poll of attenders at the codecon

employment market for applied cryptographers?

2002-08-15 Thread Adam Back
On the employment situation... it seems that a lot of applied cryptographers are currently unemployed (Tim Dierks, Joseph, a few ex-colleagues, and friends who asked if I had any leads, the spate of recent security consultant .sigs, plus I heard that a straw poll of attenders at the codecon