Certification, Not Superpowers

The summer movie season is winding down, but the dog days (it often seems that "daze" would be equally appropriate in that usage) of August got a cardiac jolt over the weekend with the hugely lucrative release of the hotly anticipated antisuperhero blockbuster Suicide Squad. The movie is about the U.S. government deciding to place certain national security matters in the hands of a team of imprisoned supervillains. These very bad guys, so the thinking goes, will cooperate with the aim of restoring law and order because of implanted security devices that will, not to put too fine a point on it, kill them if they step out of line.

Since we're talking about the world of comic books, naturally, the U.S. government doesn't use this incredible asset for a search-and-destory mission against ISIL militants, say, or perhaps to combat the ruinous machinations of rogue investment bankers. No, the threat that must be countered is from another supervillain, sort of like if Doctor Doom and Doc Ock formed an unholy alliance of non-medical practitioners to take down Lex Luthor. (Did we just cross the streams with that reference? You should never cross the streams.)

In the real world, of course, we can't just call up the special supervillain jail every time there's a problem and see whether the work release program is already booked for the week. Particularly when it comes to cybercrime, however, we sometimes expect actual emergency responders to have almost magical superpowers. You can't just zap a security breach and make it vanish, but security professionals are usually asked to, on some level, do just that. And heaven forbid that a cyberthreat should emerge about which the IT department is (gasp!) uninformed.

Still, even if you have the merely human abilities of a thick skin and a nimble mind, then a career in IT security may provide an invigorating (and financially enriching) mix of challenges and rewards. You can start down that path today with TestOut Continuing Education's Security+ courseware. One of the benefits of Security+ certification is that it qualifies you to work for the U.S. Department of Defense. Actually, you can't even apply for most DoD infosec jobs without it.

It turns out, you see, that in the real world, Uncle Sam doesn't call the Belle Reve Penitentiary (or even the Ghostbusters) when there's something bad in the neighborhood. Certified security professionals, it would seem, are much more effective.