And once it is important for them they will just ask their normal IT people to add it as an 'extra' task, or they will just ask their current IT outsourcing companies to provide them this service.

As I posted in other threads. In the future, programmers will be much more programming 'secure' and Operating Systems will catch the problems with the installed applications, same for the webserver software. It's not going to be a fix in 6 months, but in a couple of years I see this happening. I already see a much bigger awerness with programmers than couple of years ago.

Which is a good thing. But the funny thing is. When we try to spread the word to be more infosec oriented, we're killing our own industry :-) So I would absolutely put infosec as an 'extra' skill. Just don't make it your 'only' skill.

This is a fun niche in the IT industry.

What many don't understand is that it's absolutely not easy to find a job. I think it's easier to make a buck to provide training to people than to actually make a living doing pentesting on a daily basis.

I have customers who need pentesters. I do this because of my customers question.

There is no way my customers are going to trust somebody else to sneak around and provide some report about it. That's the whole thing in this industry. TRUST is everything. That's where the power is.

Starting your own business is a great thing to do.

you have basically 2 types of Entrepreneurs:

The ones that start a business to make a living
The ones that start a business to become the next billionaire (so they think)

I assure you, being a pentester will maximum be the first one.

The second ones usually blow up within a year or 2,3 max. I'm not investing in those business anymore, I lost too much money so far with several failures.

The first type of business is still a good business. The book advise on the million dollar consultant is a good book.

I have actually a friend who is a very senior consultant in IT, call it a top Java specialist, used to be with Sun but is on his own the last 4 years and he is invoicing his personal consulting services for more than 1 Million $ a year. We don't see him very often. He's all over the world. So it is possible. I would never want his life. Never. He's actually not living. He's consulting.

I would say if possible start small with a minimum of investment. If possible do it as a side job. The best consultants who work on payroll and who want to become independent still can work for their previous boss usually. that's my experience.

Good luck. You will need it. Just remember my words: start small, low cost and invoice your customers quickly. 

So when is the depression part in life coming up ? I've never had it, felt it or wanted it ?

I'm not going to ask permission to you masters to respond to something.

Maybe it's time that some of you step down from that pedestal you are standing on. Face it, we're all nerds. End of story.

I don't agree.

I reply to things and actions I don't agree on. If you can't deal with that, then don't post on a public forum.

Go sit in your dark room, look in the mirror, laugh hard and yell 'I have all the powers!' and be done with it. That might fix a lot of your issues.

In war, it's important to pick your enemies.

You might pick the wrong one.

Just for the record, I'm not scared at all. If somebody yells at me, sure why not, I like that. But don't be surprised you get yelled back.

You hit me, fine, but I hit back, it's your problem if I hit harder than you do.

Please elaborate. What is going to happen with me.

If you are posting stuff like that, you should stand up and say exactly what you want to say to me.

What is the meaning of this post. That I need to shut up or watch out ? Watch out for what, for you, for others ? Really ?

You can answer me in PM if you don't have the balls to do it in public.

 

Look, you are one of the guys here with a lot of knowledge that a lot of guys like me are looking for.

That's the quest we are in. That's what we put all our efforts in, that's the pain we are feeling every day. That's what you have been doing to achieve your level.

When you speak, we listen.

When we ask, and you answer, we listen.

Now you can just think about how it sounds when you respond to a public message in public that you sent a PM.

That's just lame in my opinion.

I learned a lot from your answers and your comments and I hope to do so in the future. The difference between me and you is that I think that you give answers to help people, steer them in the right direction, make the quest a little less hard than it was for you. Not because you need affection or self-esteem, like you accused me at me before.

Me too.

Answering a public message with a public message that you PM'd is LAME !

 

I began with digging in the Assembly language books I bought.

And my mind wonders.. 20 years ago we used a program called softice. Why did that ever stopped being the number 1 debugger in this world ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE

They say business reasons. Nobody's using assembly debuggers anymore ? I think that's strange no ?

Is there anyone who used to use softice like me ? Or know more about it ?

Those were the days :-) 

Just my cents about memorizing linux (or as a good example Ciscio IOS commands).

It's only possible if you use it on a semi daily/weekly basis.

It takes time. but I see myself stuff do on linux shells and on cisco iOS that I don't even think about it anymore. My fingers just types attributes to do the thing.

You can't become a linux admin in a week. That's the whole point. It takes a lot of time and active duty 

Bah, most business still run windows XP anyway 

You need to read better. When did I said I'm giving up ?

The written of the CCIE is nothing compared to the lab. The written is just.. the written.

It's the CCIE lab that will kill you.