We are regularly hearing from our security clients about their difficulties finding people with the right skills – or when they do finally find them, these people are too costly to employ because their skills are in such demand.

Indeed, the “unavailability of people with the right skills” was cited as a top challenge for security groups in both our enterprise and SMB surveys.

In comparing need for talent across 25 different IT roles, Forrester analysts came to the conclusion that information security experts are among the hottest roles in IT, sharing the top spot with information/data architects.

The skills shortage is likely to get worse before it gets better. We’re unlikely to see a significant spike in security experts’ salaries to attract those we need to hire: large changes in compensation for senior security personnel would run against the current of economic belt-tightening. Another typical approach to offsetting the shortage would be to train up: foster the career development and advancement of existing security personnel on our payroll. However, with all the outsourcing that is going on – and which will increasingly occur – there is a shrinking pool from which to find people with “the right stuff” worth championing their advancement.

We could look outside of security to others in IT, or even to co-workers in other departments or business groups. But given how poor a job IT Security does of marketing its value proposition, I don’t hold much hope for attracting non-security people.

What do you think? Are we about to hit a very big wall when it comes to skills and staffing? Are you presently feeling the pain of a skills shortage? Do you see such a shortage looming? What measures are you taking to acquire and nurture talent? Which ones are successful and why?

I welcome your thoughts on the topic.

Corruption, intimidation, robbery, violent assault, forgery, large-scale fraud. No, not the subject of the latest John Grisham novel, but sensational allegations, made public Apr. 4 by Hermitage Capital Management -- until recently the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. In a detailed and damning report, titled Criminal Justice -- Russian-Style, Hermitage alleges the fund's Russian subsidiaries have fallen victim to an elaborate con designed to defraud the fund of hundreds of millions of dollars. 
  
The most sensational part of Hermitage's allegations is that the attempted larceny was carried out with the direct connivance of officials in the Russian police. Hermitage alleges the police seized documents and equipment that were instrumental to the attempted fraud, which involved bogus court cases based on forged documents, the aim of which was to sue Hermitage subsidiaries for hundreds of millions of dollars. "The most shocking thing is not that there are corporate raiders in Russia who attempt to steal your shares," says Jamison Firestone, managing partner of Firestone Duncan, Hermitage's law firm. "The shocking thing is that the police worked hand-in-hand with them, and actually performed the theft of the documents so that the corporate raiders could then do their work."

So the two-pronged scam worked in one area and failed in another. The perpetrators weren’t able to steal the assets from us based on the fake court claims, but they were able to steal $230 million from the Russian government by filing amended tax returns on behalf of our stolen companies. What makes this story even more shocking is that we filed six 255-page criminal complaints with the Russian authorities in December last year, one month before the tax fraud took place, and they did nothing to stop it. Two complaints were sent to the Russian General Prosecutor, two to the Russian State Investigative Committee and two to the Internal Affairs Department of the Interior Ministry. There was enough information to prevent the fraud and indict a number of people behind it if the government had acted. 

Instead of doing anything to save the Russian state from this highly sophisticated and organized looting, two of our complaints were thrown out immediately; two were returned to the same Interior Ministry official we were complaining about (essentially, he was being asked to “investigate himself”); and one was thrown out for “lack of any crime committed.” Only one complaint was taken seriously. It was taken up by the Russian State Investigative Committee in early February, but before it could get any traction, the case was lowered to the South region of the Moscow district of the State Investigative Committee (the lowest level of the Committee) and by June, another senior Interior Ministry official whom we had named in our complaint had joined the “investigation” team (again, to “investigate himself”). To this day there has been no serious response by the Russian authorities to this massive fraud against the Russian state. 

As we described in our April letter, the problem of corporate “raiding” is now so endemic in Russia that President Medvedev speaks about it as one of the biggest problems faced by Russian businesses. In this case, raiders have taken this problem to a new and absurd extreme by “raiding” the Russian state itself and so far getting away with it. Together with HSBC, we will shortly be filing new criminal complaints with the Russian General Prosecutor and Russian State Investigative Committee as well as with many law enforcement authorities outside of Russia. It is hard to predict what will happen next in this unfolding and unbelievable saga, but as always we will keep you updated on any further developments as they arise.

Of course we see individual identity theft on a regular basis (actually as Ross Anderson points out its not really identity theft but poor controls on the bank's parts using SSNs as secrets and so on), but you dont see a major corporation stolen every day.

The first UEPS transaction was performed on Sunday, August 3, 2008, in Baghdad, Iraq, during the official launch of the UEPS smart card technology with the two state banks namely, Rafidain Bank and Rasheed Bank.

The official launch, attended by invitees from Rafidain Bank, Rasheed Bank, the Iraqi Government, War Victim Ministry and Martyrdom Ministry, demonstrated smart card registration, biometric enrolment and issuing of UEPS cards, offline loading of wage payments and government grants to the UEPS cards and dispensing of cash.

The pilot project involving 100,000 beneficiaries is now ready for implementation across selected bank branches and will enable the distribution and payment of government grants to war victims and martyrdom beneficiaries, as well as salary and wage distribution and payment to employees of the two state banks.

Brenda Stewart, Net1 Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing, said, "From the entire team at Net1, we congratulate the Iraqi consortium on this historic achievement and look forward to the successful implementation of the various projects already identified for implementation, as well as the projects currently in business development. Net1 is proud that the development of its core technology, from which it creates end-user products that satisfy the requirements of its customers, can change the way business is conducted leading to the improvement of people's lives. We share the belief of our Iraqi partners that our technology can play a fundamental role in the upliftment of the economy. The success of any technology should be measured, not only by the profits it generates for its inventors, suppliers and users, but also by the difference that it makes to the lives of people," Stewart concluded.

New Speaking of Security co-host, Amanda VanVeen, meets with Jeff Carpenter, Senior Product Marketing Manager at RSA, to discuss how the latest release of RSA Aughtentication Manager supports organizations focusing on business continuity. When natural or man-made disasters hit, it's important that employees be able to quickly and easily access network resources, but it's equally important to know just who those new remote workers are.

We’re calling this part II - and it’s being advertised as:

“How to conduct a risk analysis and produce a high impact deliverable to senior management.”

With topics:

• The life-cycle of a quantitative risk analysis
• Key control opportunities against targeted attacks
• Getting senior management to understand the risk posed to the business

I got to do the Q&A backchannel on the last presentation, and there were great questions asked.  I think this presentation will be even more exciting, as it’ll cover both analyst and management considerations.

If you’re a regular reader of the blog, I don’t think you’ll have to have attended the last one for this one to be worth your while.

REPEAT PERFORMANCES OF THE FIRST WEBEX ARE AVAILABLE

And if you missed it the first time, the playback of the first preso is here, and the slides are here.