“Being classified as security was actually keeping us away from getting the job done.”
To protect data and create safer products, security professionals should be invited into early engineering and product development discussions, says Abe Chen, a security specialist who speaks internationally and teaches at UCSC Extension.
“The road to security is by design,” he says.
Chen, a senior director of Cloud, Connectivity, Network, and Security at BYTON, is an industry leader with more than 20 years’ experience. His class, Information Security Essentials, starts June 20, 2018. But, you can also hear him talk June 30 at a LinkedIn Technical Career Talk event focusing on tech careers in China at the Computer Science Museum in Santa Clara,
The problem of security, rooted is in part in an outdated mode of development, calls for an industrywide shift, Chen says. Too often security specialists are called in too late in the development process to be effective.
“The industry has gone down the wrong path.” By the time the product development team and engineers hand it off to security it’s too late. “That’s why companies keep getting hacked.” Security professionals are forced into a reactive position.
One of the key lessons in his own career has been the importance of taking on more of an engineering and product developer’s role.
“Being classified as security was actually keeping us away from getting the job done.”
Chen urges security professionals to move out of their comfort zones and take jobs as engineers and product managers to influence the development process from the beginning. To people in other roles, he urges them to learn about security.
“Make sure it’s part of your normal work activity vs. having a line drawn about what security is.”
In Information Security Essentials, Chen, offers a broad sweep of security industry basics. A great course for engineers, IT professionals, auditors, product managers as well as people just considering the field, he says.
You can learn more about Abe Chen’s career talk on June 30, by visiting that page.
Chen’s Top 6 Reasons to Understand Information Security
- You can make an impact at the outset of product development.
- The average salary of a cyber security specialist is significantly higher than that of people in IT and other industries.
- There is a huge shortage of cyber security professionals.
- Even if this isn’t your field, you should understand what security means to your company, your products, and your society.
- Instructor Abe Chen, a senior director of Cloud, Connectivity, Network, and Security at BYTON, is an industry leader with more than 20 years’ experience.
- Plus, his team took home first place last year at DEF CON’s Car Hacking Village, beating out 10 teams in the annual security event.