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Not The Onion: Equifax's "chief security officer" majored in Music Composition: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-
by 0xbear 9y ago
Not The Onion: Equifax's "chief security officer" majored in Music Composition: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/. How did she even get this job?
- runeks 9y agoWhat does her competence in music theory say about her knowledge of IT security? Intelligent humans beings usually aren’t limited to a single area of interest.
- 0xbear 9y agoIt basically says she very likely doesn't know a damn thing about how computers work, let alone how to make large, critical systems secure.
- DavidWoof 9y agoI honestly couldn't care less what she majored in a quarter century ago. Do you honestly believe a CS bachelors degree from a couple of decades ago would have any relevance to information security today?
- 0xbear 9y agoCertainly more relevance than a Music degree. Having been a security researcher in the past would have helped too, but that's not on the menu either. I would like to understand the thought process that resulted in hiring a Music major to run an organization in charge of protecting one of the largest troves of PII in the history of mankind.
- watwut 9y agoAround 5 years into career, it does not matter what you studied or whether you finished. It matters only what you do now and how old are you. The process starts with music major getting job out of music industry and then working her way up the corporate ladder just as anybody else ever worked his way up - except with having some disadvantage in the beginning.
- 0xbear 9y agoDo you apply this line of reasoning to your doctors and lawyers as well?
- wglb 9y agoCheck what batchelor degrees the majority of Lawyers have. It might surprise you. Most practicing programmers that are called engineers are not trained in Engineering either. Computer Science is not Engineering.
- watwut 9y agoI described how it works in this industry. Lawyers and doctors work in different industry and are bound by different laws. There was no line of reasoning, only observation. You asked the question, I answered. I assumed you work in different place/industry and your question is honest quest to find how things work.
- watwut 9y agoIt is pretty common to have people in tech who studied something else. Or dropped out. And security is one of those places where career changers end up more often. Also, general computer science majors actually learn only very little security in school. So, that is how and why it probably does not even matters all that much. Yet moreover, corporate security is quite uncool to people who do academic anything (including security) or worked as security researchers. Corporate security is more about negotiation, enforcement, standards compliance and other significantly less interesting things to someone who like research or low level details.
- wglb 9y agoThere is no school or course of study that will prepare you for a career as a CSO.