I'm not really sure what the best fix is; there are many possible ones. I've seen total clowns pushing decades-old nonsense be taken seriously by competent businesses simply because they thought "hiring an expert" was enough, like they're a plumber or something.

I think that’s a big difference.

I believe there was an article on HN recently about a startup that used a "lawyer" that wasn't because they didn't check their credentials after getting a great reference. Just because there are consequences doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I feel quite certain that I haven't, I just think the point is poorly made and I've spoken specifically to why I think that to be the case. You can get all the recommendations and referrals you want for an infosec professional; nothing stops that person from holding themselves out to be such a professional, quality of work or competency performing it notwithstanding.

You can absolutely suck as a pentester, but still legally hold yourself out to be one and advertise yourself as one to anyone who will hire you.

You can NOT do the same, holding yourself as an attorney or a doctor without very real risk of legal action if you are in fact-not licensed to do either. There are bar associations and medical boards governing various aspects of their work, and how their work is conducted, performs ethics and competency investigations on license holders, and can take away their license to continue working in such capacity if said investigations deem fit. No such governing board or ethical board exists for infosec professionals.

That is a pretty important difference that shouldn't be ignored just to make a petty point about how easy is is to ask for a referral.

Just because there are consequences doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Which is only supplemental to all of this. My entire point is that it happens, and the prudent do the diligence to make sure it doesn't.

People who are wrong usually do.

> You can get all the recommendations and referrals you want for an infosec professional; nothing stops that person from holding themselves out

Here is where you missed the point.

You are correct that we do not license, say, pen testers the same way we license doctors. You are incorrect in thinking that this matters.

The point is that in both cases, reputation is the best general-purpose measure of who you want. That's all.

My mentioning certs may have steered you wrong, and that was a bit of a distraction. My point there was that certs tell us something, usually not much, but are still better indicators than their self-advertising.

Does reputation matter? Yes. This I will openly concede. Do I think credentials are meaningless? No.

Where we disagree is "thinking that this matters". I still think it absolutely does, and think the analogy is a poor one. You clearly think it doesn't, that's fine, but I don't think it makes either one of us less or more wrong. Perhaps that's all there is at play here, a difference of opinion in how an organization prosecutes the search for a qualified expert in security, medicine or law; and I think it's revealingly disingenuous to frame such organizational decision making and risk tolerances when seeking professional services with rigid and inflexible absolutes of "right way" or "wrong way" or whether or not method A matters whereas method B doesn't.

Also the computer itself solves this problem for you in many cases, a guest profile typically deletes all browser session info when you log out.

Many sites? Probably.

You're assuming people log out reliably or otherwise behave in the most secure way. They don't.

I also don't see how logging out/killing a session after 15 minutes of inactivity is much of a hardship for the user.

And it's not just extremely annoying, it's also completely unnecessary. Just put a "trust this browser" checkbox on the sign-in page and adjust the session timeout accordingly.

That works. It defaults to the "safe" behavior, but allows users to self-select into other behavior that they find less objectionable.

FWIW, my end-users are using public computer labs, so we have to build for the worst-case in terms of user security habits.