McAfee Finds That Gamers Are Strong Candidates for Cybersecurity Jobs (venturebeat.com) 62
To beat cybercriminals, McAfee suggests in a new report that gamers may be the key candidates for cybersecurity jobs. From a report: The Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity company said it did a survey of 300 senior security managers and 650 security professionals at major corporations. And 78 percent of respondents said that the current generation entering the work force -- those that grew up playing video games -- are stronger candidates for cybersecurity roles. The report suggests that gamers, those engaged and immersed in online competitions, may be the logical next step to plugging the skills gap.
92 percent of respondents believe that gaming affords players experience and skills critical to cybersecurity threat hunting: logic, perseverance, an understanding of how to approach adversaries and a fresh outlook compared to traditional cybersecurity hires. Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience. 72 percent of respondents say hiring experienced video gamers into the IT department seems like a good way to plug the cybersecurity skills gap.
92 percent of respondents believe that gaming affords players experience and skills critical to cybersecurity threat hunting: logic, perseverance, an understanding of how to approach adversaries and a fresh outlook compared to traditional cybersecurity hires. Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience. 72 percent of respondents say hiring experienced video gamers into the IT department seems like a good way to plug the cybersecurity skills gap.
Oh No! (Score:4, Funny)
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In college we had a lot of Music Majors who were more technically savvy then some of the Computer Science and Computer Engineering Majors.
Their creative skills augmented their technical training, allowing for better understanding of the classed topic. While the STEM students just took what the class taught as wrote, and didn't bother expanding their minds beyond what was taught to why it is was taught.
Now for Equifax, there is little evidence that this guy had technical training to make him qualified to ma
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While the STEM students just took what the class taught as wrote
Rote.
Now for Equifax, there is little evidence that this guy..But I wouldn't fault the fact he..point out that he
Woman. The person we are referring to is a woman.
I suppose that is the "creativity" of which you speak.
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Speaking as someone who has hired them... (Score:4, Interesting)
90% of my interview candidates can't articulate the difference between public key and symmetric encryption. I'd probably hire them if they could play Zork, and knew the difference between the two.
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Re: Speaking as someone who has hired them... (Score:1)
Anecdote time here. I once had a job interview that the guys asked the difference between streaming and message oriented protocols, 1995 bsd socket era.
I had been writing smtp, irc and pop3 clients and servers for 6 months at this point and only new udp as datagrams, not messages.
I totally borked an entry-level interview over something stupid.
Gamers == Optimizers (Score:2)
Gamers are like water flowing downhill -- they _will_ find the most efficient path. Why people are surprised about this is beyond me.
Unless you play hardcore, the entire risk:reward in games is a complete joke, especially with the grindfests that modern gaming has devolved into.
i.e.
Do some boring-menial-grind for X hours for a % of phat loot -- oh wait, that sounds exactly like a job.
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The summary calls out that they mean competitive gamers. I'd imagine that Hearth Stone and League of Legends are primary candidates for this. The first being more strategy focused, while the later has a team element to it.
Gamers == Dateless. (Score:1)
Obviously, just look at how most of them will never breed. Efficiency at it's best.
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There are two types of gamers, one good and one bad. If you do not make that distinction you are fooling yourself. Gamers who cheat and gamers who do not cheat, guess which gamers you should put in security roles and which you should avoid like the plague. So sure games who don't cheat, who don't play games where you can buy power ups to beat people who do not buy them and gamers who prefer coop to pvp and of course gamers who play I don't know maybe strategy games instead of shooters, or any game that use
When You Jump On The Door You Glitch Into The Wall (Score:3)
The best ones are French Literature degree holders (Score:1)
Surprisingly, the best ones are actually French Literature bachelor degree holders, followed closely by those with various foreign languages (other than their own).
The problem is that the vast majority of people who apply for such positions are gamers. As my gaming friends worldwide could tell you, it is very possible to be both.
Means these jobs will be automated? (Score:2)
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"computer games" is a broad term.
There are games AI is very good at, there are games it sucks at.
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Even the games where AI is difficult they are usually given some additional advantage over the player otherwise they are trivial to beat.
Managers, meet HR (Score:5, Insightful)
Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience
Except those people's resumes never make it past the HR filter because they don't list any specific training or experience.
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Three-quarters of senior managers say they would consider hiring a gamer even if that person had no specific cybersecurity training or experience
Except those people's resumes never make it past the HR filter because they don't list any specific training or experience.
I get kind of tired of such comments. As a hiring manager in cyber security at two different companies over the past decade, I can tell you that HR doesn’t decide who gets in; I do. If I want them to filter based on certain keywords, they will. If I don’t say that, they won’t. If they have any doubts, then the CV winds up in my inbox, because finding qualified cyber candidates is *hard*. So quit blaming HR - it’s my choice to reject your ill-designed and poorly-communicated CV, and t
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One of my better hires was a poli sci major...
This. One of my best promotions ever was a woman who had started in the call center. She knew all the ins and outs of the software and every fraud trick in the book. She also had a technical mindset. When I resigned, I recommended her for my old position, and she's rocking it.
CyberSecurity IMO is about 50% technical chops, and 50% soft/social/psych skills, outside of some narrow entry level positions. Even a technical pentester needs to be able to put themselves in the shoes of the developer and ask th
I've a lot of anecdotal evidence saying otherwise. (Score:1)
I'm a gamer, but in my experience most people who game enough to be called "gamers" are lucky if they aren't too high to make it to work. Above and beyond the fact that, much like me, they are often not the most socially well adjusted people. Since about half of most jobs in security industries involve writing reports for customers and presenting those reports to customers, I don't see how your average gamer fits that bill.
People SAID it, doesn't mean it's true (Score:4, Insightful)
And 78 percent of respondents said that the current generation entering the work force -- those that grew up playing video games -- are stronger candidates for cybersecurity roles.
Firstly, what respondents say isn't necessarily the objective truth. Secondly, just who are they stronger than? It should be bleedin' obvious that just on average you'd expect gamers to be stronger candidates than the average person in the street, simply by dint of probably knowing a bit more about computers.
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That. This is another clickbait study that doesn't show anything.
Answers could be biased for so many reasons. Like the mental projection for senior managers that gamers, hackers, and all those youngsters playing all day with their computers are the same... they know better how to use a computer than themselves. Sure, but that doesn't make them good at security, although obviously better than the average senior manager.
I've been fighting the idea that video games were making kids stupid for decades (they
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you smoked POT and HR say NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mcafee says this (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worth pointing out that Mcafee, a supposed "security company" who no competent security professional would rely upon, said this.
It does explain a lot, now that I think of it.
That's not all (Score:1)
They'd be ideal in marketing too, similar as it is to the spray and pray strategy employed by many gamers.
We've seen this before... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Posting this anonymously because I work in Cybersec and don't want to be quoted.
ANY of us could have been her. There's not one single person in Cybersecurity who has not done a risk acceptance on something like this because the business made an argument that it needed another month to close the vulnerability, or someone high enough accepted the risk.
We ALL get up in the morning and if we're honest with ourselves go "I hope I don't make the wrong call today", because we play in traffic every day. It's the
In other news... (Score:2)
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Maybe it depends on the kind of game. The difference between something engineering in nature, such as Factorio or Kerbal Space Program compared to something idiotic like Farmville.
Enjoying games that require a steep learning curve demonstrates a willingness to learn new skills and do problem solving. You're right that actually writing code is the most important, but it is possible too that other factors could help lead to the out-of-the-box thinking that would benefit a good security analyst.
Whodathunkit? (Score:1)
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Shenannigans! (Score:1)
I'm in my early 40s, grew up playing video games and I, as well as many others in my age range are good security analysts.
LK
what gaming teaches you really (Score:1)
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
All those years of pirating is paying of (Score:2)
What jobs are those? (Score:1)