If any of you geek type folks work in this field...um...PM me. I'm trying to help someone figure out which is the best path to this field.

two words
crowded market.

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/l ... _home.html

Not sure what else you really are looking for... or why.

My boyfriend has 45k from the GI bill and is a network admin (or so says the air national guard) with some level of military security clearance. He's trying to figure out what path to take school wise, career wise, etc. and is getting every computer geeks 2 cents on what he should do but hasn't been able to find anyone actually IN the field.

I work in the network security/ information security field here in Knoxville.

Is this thread still valid? If so please feel free to ask or private message.

Best thing he could probably apply for is a college somewhere, if you mention experience in the field of network technician in the military, just about any college school system would cream to have him on board.

*EDIT*

Looked at the original date of thread... my bad

As far as the market goes, it's great if you are willing to leave Knoxville. Hence, why I am in Nashville now. But when I was looking, I never got a single offer from Knoxville, but I was getting 2-3 offers a week from pretty much everywhere else in the U.S., including GA, WI, NC, NY, and CA. I do Linux Administration. But network security is a really good choice too. My roommate does that.

elasticwings wrote:As far as the market goes, it's great if you are willing to leave Knoxville. Hence, why I am in Nashville now. But when I was looking, I never got a single offer from Knoxville, but I was getting 2-3 offers a week from pretty much everywhere else in the U.S., including GA, WI, NC, NY, and CA. I do Linux Administration. But network security is a really good choice too. My roommate does that.

Yeah, he has been offered a job by a friend of his in Nashville starting at 30k (not in security) a year, but he wants to go to school first.

Tonight he's gonna go check out Fountainhead college. Being a UT grad, I was telling him that a degree from a real university was better than from an "institute of technology" but apparently, Fountainhead and U of Memphis are the only schools in TN on the National Security Agency's list of centers of academic excellence

So, I guess he's gonna start there.

I always recommend school. Certifications and degrees will almost always win against basement security geeks during interviews.

In my position I work in secure e-mail administration, RSA, intrusion detection, tripwire, incident handling, and patch management for desktops including Solaris, AIX, Linux, and Windows servers. Writing more documentation policies, procedures, and incident handling than I care for but its part of the game. Not to mention when auditors come in

anyway, it can be fun.

Ha.

My boyfriend met the college president tonight and it looks like he'll be going to Fountainhead.

He also now has a lunch date with an FBI recruiter.
Muhahahaha.