Tribe of Hackers Security Leaders

50Jake Williams

“My biggest challenge is letting the little things go.”

Twitter: @MalwareJake

InfoSec professional. Breaker of poorly written software. Incident responder. Digital defender. Business bilingual. Jake Williams treats InfoSec like the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm. By addressing realistic risks, Jake helps businesses create secure environments that actually function. He penetration tests organizations so they can find the weak spots before an attacker does. When an attacker does find a weak spot first, Jake works with the organization to remove the attacker, assess the damage, and remediate the vulnerabilities that allowed the attacker access in the first place. Jake is also a prolific conference speaker, an instructor, and an InfoSec mentor.

Do you believe there is a massive shortage of career cybersecurity professionals?

This is such a hard thing to answer, because if you left “career” out of it, I would have said no. But by adding “career,” I think the answer is yes. I think there are plenty of people who want to get an InfoSec job because they want the money the field promises. But I think InfoSec salaries are more a result of supply and demand than skills. For example, many InfoSec jobs don't require more expertise than systems engineering, yet in many cases we're compensated differently. Bridging the gap will be difficult but will largely involve ...