I had a weird week. I spent some time in the hospital, and whenever I was trying to do homework someone would come into the room and asked me what I was studying. This resulted in my having the same conversation several different times with different people. I would explain that I am enrolled in a cyber security program degree program. This would invariably would get the reaction, “I didn’t know that was a job.” I told them it is and what the program was about, and that I hope to get a job as a civilian contractor once I graduate. If I’m lucky enough to do this, it means I can apply my active-duty time towards a government retirement. Even though this has been my plan all along, I got to thinking about other possibilities for a career in cyber security. Since there’s nothing else to do in the hospital other than daytime TV, I did some research on the web and came across an article in which the interviewees complained about the lack of inspiration of their government jobs.
The article interviewed a couple different individuals who work in cyber security capacity for the government, and both called the boring and unimaginative. They talked about how regulated the environment is, and the lack of access to the computers they are actually protecting. They went on to talk about the restrictions they face when it comes to the type of security programs that can be applied. In the article said that individuals working in cyber security for the government were essentially acting as a gate keeper who spent their time explaining to people what they can or cannot do ensuring that they either do or don’t do it. There was nothing in this article that the sweets me from my original goals.
After my years of working in Air Force Intel, I’m very well aware of government bureaucracy and what kinds of restrictions the place on various points of access. For example, I remember the IT guys coming into our secured work space , and every time they did, we had to secure the classified and bring everything down to zero before they could be escorted in. It was an Airman’s duty to watch them like hawks in case they found any kind loose paper, or anything that could potentially be classified. if they did come across something, we were actually instructed to grab it out of their hands before they could look at it. So yeah, I think I am prepared to face restrictions over what I can or cannot access.
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