>
Thank you so much! Updated my profile.Nope. All you put in the 'about' section of your profile is the fact
that you're a student in Chicago. Your name is missing and so is your
contact info. The email address used to sign up for HN is never shown,
so you need to put it in the 'about' section if you want others to see
it. You posting your email address in one of your posts, so you don't
have any issues about divulging it (some people do).
> I tried getting in contact with Thomas Ptacek and some other people, but I have not received any responses. I'll ping the other names you gave me.
Give Thomas a break. It's Thanksgiving weekend so he probably has far
more important things to do besides answer emails, namely, family
commitments.
> I made a short list of security firms. But I have no idea how to assess them. Matasano has the most informative website. Do you know of any competitors to Matasano? How would you compare computer security companies? What metric do you use?
First and foremost, you keep tossing around this undefined phrase,
"computer security," as if it actually means something. The phrase is
far to widely used to mean anything specific, and hence, it is
exceedingly vague. Do you want to get into reverse engineering,
auditing, virus analysis, exploit research, analysis automation,
forensics, physical attacks, penetration testing, cryptanalysis, and the
list goes on and on.
To answer your question directly, for me, there are only two metrics
that matter: (1) Do I like the people? and (2) Do I like their work?
In the long run, little else matters. Some people are brilliant but are
not nice, and others are nice but don't do anything worthwhile. Both of
these scenarios are recipes for an unsatisfying working relationship.
Do some research on the people as well as the kinds of things they do,
and then get to know them.