| > If the government wants to recruit more hackers, they need to sweeten the offer; but how can they do so with (a) government-controlled funding and salaries, (b) strict background checks that are required for sensitive work, such as national security and (c) a mandate that many people they're trying to recruit simply don't support? They can do it with how they are going about it. Lets look at what is going on here. The US government is funding education that is tailored to focus on their topics of interest. These students then spend 2 years working for the government getting more education and experience. At this point, (a) is remedied by leaving government positions for better paid contractor ones (I think the US government / contractor relationship is greatly misunderstood in general) or feeding off into private industry. If you read through several bios of people in the industry you find ties to DoD and intel agencies all over the place (some are as contractors). But the idea here is (in my opinion), the government isn't concerned about who is on their payroll, but rather they have more capable professionals trained for this type of work in the country. People whose skills they can pay for one way or another. I think a lot of people misunderstand the requirements of (b). And those that can't qualify for top clearances can be fed as "infosec engineers" into other agencies where a secret clearance is all that is required (FAA for example). Again, just having more trained people spread about is the goal here. Additionally, contractors can conduct work in non-classified environments with non-cleared personnel in some situations and/or you have more distant relationships. Think vulnerability selling / purchasing. As for (c), it is often hard to tie someone's direct work to some mandate. Where do you draw the line? Not working in a specific group? Specific agency? Contractor? Supplier? At some level, Microsoft is supporting the work NSA does. Different people draw different lines at different places. |