News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Department.

Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by xvector on Saturday August 21, 2021 @08:50PM (#28261966)
The state department, hell, a big portion of the entire government is a joke when it comes to cybersecurity.

This comes with the turf of refusing to pay competitive compensation. I'd personally love to help secure the government, but I'm not going to take a massive hit in QoL just for a sense of patriotism.

During the Black Hat 2021 closing keynote, the Secretary of Homeland Security was begging for more cybersecurity engineers to join the government, but there was no acknowledgement of the compensation problem, which is one of their biggest roadblocks. It makes zero sense to whine about getting hacked while paying a fifth of the compensation of private industry. The government ought to put up or shut up.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by OminousWeapons on Saturday August 21, 2021 @10:17PM (#28262318)
You see the same issues across government. I remember listening to Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, talk about the major problems in academic life sciences at my University. He opened by saying he wasn't there to talk about comp or funding which was amusing considering that every problem in the space ultimately tracks back to hilariously inadequate funding and comp.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by timeless102 on Saturday August 21, 2021 @10:47PM (#28262441)
What kind of problems was he describing? Sounds interesting
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by OminousWeapons on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @04:25PM (#28306461)
Unfortunately I don't remember as this presentation happened almost ten years ago. I do distinctly remember the one element I mentioned though as it seemed sort of absurd (even though he is obviously not responsible for the NIH budget and would almost surely agree with me that it should be raised).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by Seattle3503 on Saturday August 21, 2021 @09:42PM (#28262178)
For me the issue is that I'd probably need to move to the East coast and work in a government office environment. I'd rather stay on the West coast.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by wslack on Saturday August 21, 2021 @10:09PM (#28262274)
> The government ought to put up or shut up.

That requires congress to "vote to massively raise the salaries of bureaucrats." How do you suggest that happening? The media won't care about the distinction of it only being for security experts.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by nonameiguess on Sunday August 22, 2021 @10:34AM (#28265797)
They don't have a choice. GS and military pay bands require Congressional approval. The agencies putting out requisitions can't just decide to pay more.

In practice, however, this is part of why so many technical roles are contracted instead of being permanent agency positions. Contractors can and do pay more than the government itself.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by raincom on Sunday August 22, 2021 @01:19PM (#28267430)
Contracting itself has many flaws: who makes more out of the contracting? The contracting companies. Such companies filter out good candidates who wants better pay.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by post_break on Saturday August 21, 2021 @09:54PM (#28262221)
Don't they also struggle with their drug testing policy?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Depa... by OminousWeapons on Saturday August 21, 2021 @10:13PM (#28262292)
At least they are moving in the right direction. IIRC, in the past .gov had a policy saying you can't have used marijuana in the past 3 years or any other drug in the past 10. Now I think it's 1 year and 3 or 5 years respectively?
[ Parent | on HN ]