CISSP designation

[Eric]

As physical security is including more IP related devices and computer knowledge levels increase, are security supervisors & managers going to need training in information technolgy? Of course it does depend on your employers needs.

I noticed at least one university is offering a prep course towards the CISSP, is a combination of knowledge (physical & IT) the way we are going?

https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi

http://ce-online.ryerson.ca/ce/calendar/default.asp?section=program&sub=atd&cert=ATDNET05&mode=program

[N. A. Corbier]

I firmly believe that technical security should be a blended approach with networking, social engineering, physical security of servers and client terminals, and education.

[Eric]

I may be wondering if anyone has a crystal ball to see the future, but do you see physical and IT security coming (morphing, evolving)under one director for in house operations and even contract?

[N. A. Corbier]

Not in the near future, honestly. The CIO is a powerful position because business runs on technology. The Plant Manager is not really that powerful of a position.

Where most physical security operations are contracted, the technical security operations are in-house and part of the whole IT infrastructure. Most technical security professionals are also network engineers, web designers, and application developers who added a second discipline.

Convergence is happening in the contract world in "IT Crisis Situations," where the company has the possibility to lose its data or have the data comprimised by a disgruntled worker.

This is where physical security contractors with "IT Response Teams" come in. The "IT response team" comes in under false pretenses, sets up snort filters, makes backups, isolates the servers and client workstations, starts hunting for viruses and other zero-day attacks the night before. That morning, the physical security team secures the server room and the "digruntled employee" is terminated.

This is an era where one pissed-off man can completely destroy a company, both legally and financially. After all, with such things as Sarbanes-Oxley, Requirements of E-Mail Archival, the ability to remotely get into both Windows/Mac OS X Server/Linux platforms... All it takes is one pissed-off IT manager or worker to go, "Screw all ya'alls, I'm deleting your data and making a backup copy of all your source code available on the web."