The Most Secure Job in IT

Cyberattackers have been a thorn for computer users for years, but attacks are growing exponentially, and they're becoming more costly to consumers and business, even threatening our country's infrastructure. Unfortunately, the computer security industry is having a hard time keeping the bad guys at bay.

An article Thieves Winning Online War published in The New York Times on Saturday under contends Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know how to fix it.

One of the warriors against these bad buys is Phillip Porras, a program director and computer security expert at SRI International, a contract research institute that's collecting more than 10,000 unique samples of malware daily from around the global. Here's what Porras told The Times about his job:

“To me it feels like job security.”

The Labor Department expects a big jump in jobs related to computer security in the next decade. Here's what the department's current Occupational Handbook says about computer security specialists:

Demand for computer security specialists will grow as businesses and government continue to invest heavily in “cybersecurity,” protecting vital computer networks and electronic infrastructures from attack. The information security field is expected to generate many new system administrator jobs over the next decade as firms across all industries place a high priority on safeguarding their data and systems.

The government doesn't specifically track IT security occupations, but classifies them under the category computer support specialists and systems Administrators. That category is projected to grow between 2006 and 2016 by 18%, much faster than most other professions.