Hi,
Does anyone have a real-world feel for whether ethical hacking is a growing industry? Not being directly in the industry it's hard to gauge if this is something more companies are investing in. Are contracts going to the big vendors or is there enough to go around that the smaller independent firms are getting a look in?

Jim

Yep, I agree...you have to be wide educated...

While this being my first post on this forum, I believe it is important to have a wide range of skills...being network skills (e.g. Cisco / Nortel), server skills (web / linux / MS) and client skills (linux / MS / Mac)....

This way only you can do pen testing on your won...
Anything else you need to have a team of pen testers, combining each individual skill to make the perfect pen testing team...

Greetz

Gert

I have to agree with the other replies to this post. You need a broad skill base.

One thing i have noticed, working in the public sector in the UK, is that when trying to chose an external compnay to carry out any testing they have to reach a specific level of approval - eg CHECK via CESG. This is all well and good but it limits the availability of companies as this is neither cheap or easy to obtain. In order to get accredited you need to spend quite a bit of cash so unless you are either working for a big company or an ex-government crew then it is quite hard/expensive, not sure how this works in the US so correct me if i am wrong.
The problem is then that you have a smaller list of companies to chose  from and although some are good others are not so good and as someone mentioned in a post before just because you select a thrid party to do some work and a flash consultant turns up, who is to say that they will actually do the job for you.
Personally i prefer to go with smaller companies as they, in my experience, work on a more personal basis rather than just doing a job. I have recently gone through the process to chose a company and was only offered to attend the pen test by one company, which in the end i suggested to go for. Not a big thing but it is nice to think that if i wanted i could go and watch what was done rather than just waiting for the report to arrive.
With this in mind it makes it harder for small companies and consultants to get the bigger contracts because they need to spend the cash just to get through the front door.
Sorry to move slightly off topic but this is something that does bug me and i think is limiting for people looking to break into the market.