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Issa-Cos Newsletter ISSA-COS WWW.ISSA - COS.ORG NEWSLETTER VOLUME 4 NUMBER 3 M A R C H 2 0 1 5 Getting Ready For Spring INSIDE THIS ISSUE: olleagues, event one evening in April and the The Tech Industry’s board is finalizing the details of As I write this we are Darkest Secret: It’s All 2 what that will look like. If you have About Age busily preparing for our ideas of what you Membership Update 3 C Spring would like to see conference to be held Chapter Financials 4 A Note From please let your Training Team on 25 March at 5 Members-At-Large, Update UCCS. We have Our President Russ Weeks and A Note from Our Vice several vendors 5 James Asimah, President signed up, a very know. This is ISSA-COS Cyber interesting group of 10 something new for Focus Day speakers focused on us and there are no Are You a Risk to cybercrime topics, going-in plans that Your Own Firm or 13 and a real opportunity Business? say ‘we have to do to reach out to a How the NSA’s things this way”… Firmware Hacking population of people 12 let’s make the event Works and Why It’s working cybersecurity By Dr. Patrick Laverty So Unsettling something we want issues in our town Surprise! America it to be, all ideas will receive fair Already Has a who have either never heard of 15 discussion and consideration so Manhattan Project for ISSA or don’t fully know the Developing Cyber bring them up. benefits of being a chapter SSL-busting code that threatened Lenovo member. This is an opportunity for One thing that I want our 14 users found in a us all to reach out to our dozen more apps chapter to guard against is keeping colleagues, customers, and friends things the same for too long. Alleged Russian Mega-Hacker 15 who are working in this career field Routines are important and I Extradited and invite them to a FREE understand that but a routine Chapter Photos 16 conference where they can earn chapter can grow stale very quickly. knowledge, CPEs, and expand I want a chapter where people What the NY Times thought about the 18 their professional network. show up early to meetings because laptop 30 years ago they are excited to be there or they I mentioned before we are going attend conferences because it to do a professional networking (Continued on page 3) The ISSA Colorado Springs Newsletter incorporates open source news articles as a train- ing method to educate readers on security matters in compliance with USC Title 17, Section 107, Paragraph a. The views expressed in articles obtained from public sources within this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of ISSA, this Chapter or its leadership. P A G E 2 The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age By Vivek Wadhwa, LinkedIn, It may be wrong, but look at this from the April 22, 2013 point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out- They don’t prepare you for of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it this in college or admit it in can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills job interviews. The harsh — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a reality is that if you are month training the younger worker, the middle-aged, write computer company is still far ahead. The young code for a living, and earn a understand new technologies better than the six-figure salary, you’re old do, and are like a clean slate: They will headed for the rapidly learn the latest coding methods and unemployment lines. Your techniques, and they don’t carry any market value declines as “technology baggage.” The older worker likely you age and it becomes has a family and needs to leave the office by 6 harder and harder to get a p.m. The young can easily pull all-nighters. job. What the tech industry often forgets is that I know this post will provoke with age comes wisdom. Older workers are anger, outrage, and denial. usually better at following direction, mentoring, But, sadly, this is the way and leading. They tend to be more pragmatic things are in the tech world. It’s an “up or and loyal, and to know the importance of being “Even out” profession — like the military. And it’s team players. And ego and arrogance usually as competitive as professional sports. fade with age. though you Engineers need to be prepared. During my tech days, I hired several may be This is not openly discussed, because programmers who were over 50. They were the employers could be accused of age steadiest performers and stayed with me highly discrimination. But research, such as that through the most difficult times. completed by University of California, It can be difficult for some companies to experienced Berkeley, professors Clair Brown and Greg justify paying the age premium. For tech Linden shows that even those with masters and wise, startups in particular, it always boils down to degrees and Ph.Ds have reason to worry. cost: Most can’t even afford to pay $60,000 employers Brown and Linden’s analysis of Bureau salaries, so they look for motivated, young aren’t willing of Labor Statistics and Census data for the software developers who will accept minimum semiconductor industry revealed that wage in return for equity ownership and the or able to although salaries increased dramatically for opportunity to build their careers. engineers in their 30s, these increases We can blame the employer, but in a free pay an slowed after the age of 40. After 50, the economy you can’t really force any company to mean salary fell by 17% for those with experienced hire workers who have the wrong skills or to bachelors degrees and by 14% for those pay higher salaries. Larger companies develop with masters degrees and Ph.Ds. And worker twice products for global markets and have global salary increases for holders of workforces. They will hire where they can get or thrice postgraduate degrees were always lower the best skill for the best price. what an than for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even Ph.D degrees didn’t So, whether we like it or not, it’s a tough entry-level provide long-term job protection). industry, and the onus is on employees to keep themselves marketable. I know that many It’s the same in the software industry. worker people will take offense at what I have to say, Prominent Silicon Valley investors often but here is my advice to those whose hair is earns..” talk about youth being an advantage in beginning to grey. entrepreneurship. If you look at their investment portfolios, all you see are Read the rest here: engineers who are hardly old enough to https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2013042202004 shave. They rarely invest in people who 9-8451-the-tech-industry-s-darkest-secret-it-s- are old. all-about-age ISSA - C O S N E W S V O L U M E 4 P A G E 3 Membership Update We participated in Colorado Technical University’s (CTU) networking event during February and spoke to several students potentially interested in joining and participating in the student mentorship program. We will be following up with folks this month. Hopefully we’ll gain some new members. We’ve been trying to expand our reach into other local universities and this appears to have been a good opportunity. Last month I mentioned that we were looking for part-time job opportunities or internships. Thanks for your responses—we’ve received several openings and have passed them on to our student members. Please keep us in mind and send any of those types of opportunities to Melissa or Dave so we can get them out to our student members. We received very good feedback on the two new committees—Ethics and Marketing. Gee, that almost sounds like a training topic for the new Ethics committee, but, I digress. J Your responses have filled the Ethics committee and have started filling the Marketing committee. We still need some more volunteers to help out with the Marketing committee so if you’re interested, please contact Suzanne Chance at [email protected] and join the team. As Tim Westland and Suzanne begin to get their respective committees off the ground, I’m sure we’ll be seeing some feedback from them soon. We seem to be holding our own with numbers, showing a slight increase in our total—we hit 388. So, our renewals and new members are keeping pace with our New Member losses in this transient community. That’s great news and we need to continue our February efforts to find new members and remind current members to renew. We are anticipating a response soon from ISSA International on some changes that will allow Michael Robinson us to expand our student outreach and sponsorships. Hopefully, we’ll have that in place for next month’s newsletter. Brian Armstrong Last, and of course not least, I’d like to welcome those new members on behalf of Eric Bailey the Chapter! When you’re participating in Chapter activities, please take a moment to introduce yourself to members of the board, me, and other members. Don’t forget to Andrew Labasi identify yourself as a new member and feel free to ask for help or information.
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