Career Is So Over?

Why a former CISO is selling real estate

By Sarah D. Scalet

February 17, 2004 — CSO —

Gail Griffith sells houses for a living. But what interests her more than a nice 4-bedroom in a good school district are paper shreddersor, more specifically, the fact that her real estate office does not have them, even though mortgage applications contain personal details that can be used for identity theft.

Security is in my heart. I cant get away from it, says Griffith, former deputy CISO of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. But, apparently, security has gotten away from her. For the past two years, since she took an early leave package from Delta, Griffith has been working for Metro Brokersand growing increasingly frustrated about job prospects for information security practitioners who are more interested in strategy than in bits and bytes. In fact, shes no longer actively looking for a job in her field.

Mostly when you go looking at information security jobs, theyre looking for technical skillsfor somebody to manage the network, says Griffith, 56, who has decades of experience in IT and was a co-founder of Georgias influential Stop Identity Theft Network. Im just so far beyond that. Technology is just a tool.

Its enough to make me wonder if that old joke about CIO standing for career is over might returnthis time, with CISO standing for career is so over. The saying didnt prove true for CIOs, and I dont think it will for CISOs, either. But were definitely in a lull.

There are fewer jobs out there, and the question is, why? says Lori Sabat, who runs an eponymous information security executive placement firm. The jobs are in very specific areas, like application security, security architecture and high-level network engineering.

Not that there arent CISO roles being created. The U.S. Department of Treasury recently named AT&Ts Tim Hurr its first CISO. The federal government has embraced the role; the Department of Homeland Security has even created a CISO Forum. But there just arent as many new CISO positions as people like Sabat expected in industries like transportation, utilities and energy.

Everyone knows that, recovery or no, the job market stinks right now. But theres more to it than that. Sabat says that the large number of mergers and acquisitions, especially in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries, means that there are fewer companies at which to place C-level security executives. More ominously, though, she suspects that companies are relying on vendors and consultantsnot their own executivesto guide their information security efforts.

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