Upskilling in times of uncertainty and change is a prudent career decision By Tony Vizza, CISSP, CCSP The saying “everything happens for a reason” is often invoked as a message of support during times of hardship or adversity. While it may be difficult to apply to a crisis on the scale and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resiliency that we as individuals develop during such difficult times can make us stronger and better prepared for whatever comes next. A crisis comes with danger, but it also comes with opportunities. While the tourism, travel and retail sectors have been devastated by the global economic crisis, tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet (parent of Google) are now all

Did you ever hear the story about the hyphen that cost 80 Million dollars? In the infancy of the United States’ space program, a programming error resulted in a forced abort of a rocket early in its flight to prevent possible injury along its crash path. Or how about the time a pilot miscalculated the required fuel for a flight from Montreal to Edmonton? These are both fatal examples of how human error can have serious consequences. In our hyper-connected world, our errors can have damaging consequences. Sometimes, the harm can be minor, such as the “Melissa” macro virus of 1999, in the early days of computer viruses. More recently, however, the damages can have a greater impact, as in

The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification is considered to be the gold standard in information security. This is so because of all the doors that certification opens to a CISSP professional. Those doors lead to many different types of positions and opportunities, thus making the information security community dynamic and multifaceted. In support of this diversity, (ISC)² has launched a series of interviews to explore where CISSP certification has led security professionals. Last time Angus Macrae shared his CISSP experience. This installment features Melissa Parsons, Senior Consultant in Cyber Security for KPMG Canada. She has notable success driving and managing increasingly complex IT, security and privacy related projects. What job do you do today? Currently, I work as

Demand for cybersecurity professionals will stay strong through the remainder of the decade, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. In the 10-year period between 2019 and 2029, employment of information security analysts will grow by 31%, according to the bureau’s Occupational Outlook Handbook. The projected growth rate is more than seven times higher than the national job growth average of 4%, and roughly three times that of the 11% projected growth in IT-related occupations. The reason for the high growth rate for information security analysts is no secret to anyone in the industry. As the bureau notes: “Cyberattacks have grown in frequency, and analysts will be needed to come up with innovative solutions to prevent hackers from stealing critical

By Stephen Fried, CISSP As COVID-19 began to spread rapidly across the globe in 2020, many organizations moved their employees off company premises and enabled large "work from home" efforts. Nobody knew how long this would last, but we assumed we could work remotely for a few months until this thing worked itself out, then return to the office and get back to "normal." We were very wrong. We weren’t just wrong about the length of the crisis; we were wrong about how our employees defined “home.” What we didn’t anticipate is that the pandemic would force companies to rethink the definition of “home.” Adult children needed to live with their sick parents to care for them. Travelers on vacation