Security Ripcord

Mentoring can be a powerful learning tool for learning specific topics. I have been thinking about mentoring a little bit because I have often found myself thinking that a mentor would be beneficial to my technological and managerial growth.  From my experiences I have determined there are a few requirements to setting up a good mentoring situation. Now, I am not a professional mentor, so, your mileage may vary.

• Focus: a broad range of mentoring subjects do not really work. A mentoring experience should be focused on a specific area.
• Time: both mentor and mentee must have time and inclination for the mentoring experience. Mentoring requires consistent meetings and reviews.
• Experience: A mentor must have knowledge of the subject and mentoring. A mentee must be able to learn the subject and be willing to branch out without encouragement.
• Desire: Both parties need to have a strong desire to participate from the beginning to the end of the mentoring experience.
• End State: both mentor and mentee must have an understanding of when the mentoring experience will end.  This may be after a specific set of goals is reached or a after a specific time period.

Personally, I don’t think that a blossoming Information Technology (IT) Security professional needs mentoring outside of the educational practices implemented by their place of employment. But that is the key: place of employment. Without a job it is difficult to implement the requirements that I listed above. Obviously this means that my list should include the additional requirement of: a job. Of course, a job is generally why a blossoming IT Security professional wants to enter into a mentoring experience.

How do people attempting to enter the IT Security profession get past this gap? My thoughts: effort, tenacity, and the will to teach. A well rounded IT Security professional starts by knowing a lot of things. They slowly, via experience, move to knowing a lot about a lot of things and eventually realize that they do not know and have not done everything. Once they realize they do not know everything they accept the fact that they will be learning during their whole career. I also believe that continuous effort and vocalism are requirements for becoming a well-rounded IT Security professional. Not only does this get you noticed by your peers, it expresses confidence to other administrators and managers.

As IT Security professionals mature they tend to filter into specific areas of focus. This usually means that the influential people in their lives become more narrow and they start to enter into good peer-mentoring relationships. By “peer-mentoring” I mean that each person grows from the other’s experiences. They drive each other to dig deeper and accomplish more. Eventually, people start developing other interests and the “peer-mentoring” relationships shift. But the excellent thing is that, generally, the previous relationships (business or friend) remain strong and continue throughout the years. At some point, interests will diverge again and collaboration will continue.

So, if you are just getting into IT Security or attempting to transition to a new focus area, do not get stifled or discouraged by the lack of mentoring opportunities. Rather, put yourself out there. Start working on personal projects. Tell people about your experiences, failures and success (because BOTH are important to the learning process). Do not be discouraged by critical feed back and have fun even if the subject is hard from start to finish. Remember, experience comes with time and effort. Learning the hard way helps people understand the easy and efficient way. In the end, people will notice and you will have achieved your goal.

Go forth and do good things,

Don C. Weber

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