Security Ripcord

Okay, I am getting a little sick and tired of the constant chatter about “this operating system is better than that operating system.” It is like the white noise in the background of any room where there is more than one technically savvy person. People just need to get over the fact that there is more than one tool out there and that a job can usually be done by any one of those tools. Sure, many times one of those tools does a better job than the rest, but guess what, that is true of everything else in life.

“Where is this coming from?” you ask. Well, this past week I had an interview for an Security Manager position and one of the system administrators asked the question, “So, how are you going to treat my linux server if you are hired to this position?” I told him that I didn’t have a problem with one operating system over another. I explained that any job can be done by any operating system and that a good security administrator will have to be ready to evaluate any system to determine how it is affecting the security of the environment. A pretty good answer in my mind but it seems that the statement “any job can be done by any operating system” raised a few hairs and ruffled a few tail feathers.

Look, in my heart of hearts I am a Linux man. However, I working in a Solaris and IRIX mixed environment that is moving to a Solaris and SUSE mix and periodically a Windows system will rear its ugly head. Do I mind? No. I am happy to secure or provided suggestions when securing any operating system. Has this hurt me a little in the fact that I am not completely conversant in any one operating system. Maybe, but I am ready for all encounters and I will overcome either with the knowledge in my head or a little bit of SANS Reading Room and/or Google.
Please get over it,

Cutaway

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.