Currently there is an enormous need for information security specialists. I recently attended a conference in Las Vegas called DefCon. DefCon 8 to be more precise. DefCon is a hackers convention. It is the cutting edge convention for the intruder community. People came from Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Austrailia, New Zealand, Britian. From the NSA, the FBI, the USAF OIS, some foreign government agents. Some of the feds gave lectures. All federal agencies are hiring.
20 years ago I was a graduate student at UC Davis pursuing a career in chemistry by working for a PhD in agricultural chemistry. It became clear at the time that information was the wave of the future. It was quite clear at the time as well that chemistry was an impacted field. I set about to get some skills that were to be my parachute, so to speak, alluding to the book "What Color is Your parachute". Programming skills. When I was able to leave the University I started a document delivery service, a business that suffered a telling blow when the UC Berkeley libraries shut down for the Christmas break. My next endeavor was to start a database search service called Informasearch. I enrolled in courses with the ACS, learning to search the CA File, The Reg File. I had a few customers over the years but I found out that the benefits of having run that business were mostly intangible. I found out that an information broker, as I was, did not maximize one's potential by being able to supply information as it was to know which information was important and to acquire it.
