Ask HN: Should I become a security engineer?

I think what you mean is security researcher rather than security engineer.

The easiest thing you can do is e-mail all penetration testing companies who can find near (or far) from where you live and ask if they are looking for interns or graduates. Even if they don't advertise at the moment, there's a good chance you'll get a positive reply, because the demand is greater than the supply.

Most security companies have a research department which you'll be able to apply for, after you've joined (at least in the UK such departments require security clearance).

Also, having an OSCP or OSCE certificate will definitely get you an interview.

You definitely want to do OSCP if it's something you can afford to do.

Be aware however, it's not cheap nor is it easy.

Having your OSCP though will definitely land you job interviews and will go most of the way of landing the job itself.

> Where do I start looking?

Go where the fish are-- start attending conferences. Often the organizers wil have a discount rate for students. Sometimes they'll offer free admission if you volunteer at reception booth for a few hours. Being there in-person makes a big impact, it's a signal you're serious.

Here's good list > https://www.concise-courses.com/security/conferences-of-2017...

If you want to do cryptography, it's probably easiest to get into it through an academic career. Please understand it's quite a small field where the amount of talkers largely exceeds contributors. Alternatively, start learning and contributing to open source crypto libraries and projects, you'll meet people who can help you.

It's funny you can't find application security job postings, most of the bread and butter work these days is web, mobile and penetration testing. Get into security consulting and you'll do this type of gigs till your fingers bleed.

I'd suggest you learn about security, there's plenty of good info and books to be found and try to apply it instead of talk about it.

Good luck.

Thank you for your reply.

I'm not interested in getting into cryptography research since I find it too theoretical. I agree with you about how it is a small field and I think I'll have a very small chance to make a valuable contribution to anyone if I get into cryptographic research.

I think I'll follow your advice on contributing to OSS crypto projects. I've used openssl and crypto++ but I've never really contributed to a real project.

Thanks again.

The best advice I can give you is to join a Security CTF team (your college may or may not have one, but there are others that are open to all).

Internships and jobs will open up from being part of a CTF group. It's also A LOT of fun* (*opinion).

netsec might not necessarily be what you're looking for. A position as a Security Researcher is probably what you most fit into... finding the right recruiter can also help you out a lot.

Another (and honestly, easier to get into) security industry is the public sector. Intelligence agencies, military intelligence branches, etc. They'll hire you based on personality and potential, and will train you further. This (in my limited experience) usually means less pay.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

I like your CTF suggestion. But finding a job as a security researcher will be hard if you cannot show any experience.

You're absolutely right, but people are willing to consider CTF work as experience. If you can go into depth how you solved a problem, no one will question your conceptual understanding.

I think it's definitely easier if your interviewer actually knows what security ctf's are.

Thanks for your reply.

Can you please explain what you think differentiates someone working in netsec from security researcher? And where do you think a Security Engineer position would fit in?

Thanks for the public sector advice. Although, I think I won't be a good fit.

Thank you!

So, take this with a grain of salt because I do not actually work in the security industry.

My understanding of security researchers is limited to an academic setting. Many PhD students, masters students, professors, etc at my school were technically security researchers. Usually this consists of a lot of theoretical exploration. Check out this paper, I think it's pretty accurate to what a security researcher does: https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/ So that's the academic side. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc. will also hire Security Researchers where your job is a bit more open ended and focused on outside-the-box work (finding new vulnerabilities, testing software, maybe some offensive security work).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of a netsec person is someone who's job is to implement and maintain secure systems. While this can definitely involve experimentation, it seems like more of a defensive approach to security. A job description might say things like: "Protect critical systems from attacks", "incident response", "disaster recovery".

I think a Security Engineer is much closer to a Security Researcher, but in a more 'applied' way... for example, as a security engineer at Dropbox your job might be to actually implement (write code for) cryptographic communication between the client and server. So, to me, a Security Engineer is much closer to a software engineer. Whereas a Security Researcher is much closer to an academic.

I hope this helps clarify things. There are other great responses on this thread.

Also, I completely understand public sector not being a good fit.

What is your opinion on starting out with government contractors?

I don't know enough to have a well formed opinion. I don'y know any contractors personally, and haven't read up on it much. Sorry!

> I'm surprised when people say Keccak is the best but they've never heard of BLAKE2.

I think this is where you belong: www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmary