I understand why good people are leaving. What concerns me are those
who either can't find other work, or are simply holding down a job.
During an economic down turn back in the early 80's, our agency laid
off about two fifths of our staff. The same was happening in all
state agencies. Employees had "return rights', giving them the
ability to bump someone out of a position if they had held it and had
seniority. And so, the young talented, energetic employees left for
greener pastures, often in other states. Behind were the plodders and
those putting in their time while waiting for retirement.
My boss said to me one day, "There are Eagles and there are
Ducks...we're getting the ducks".
Now, in defense of many of those left behind, I would say that they
were not really laggards. They just were not the creative,
visionaries. It was years before we built back to the dynamic Program
that we had been in the late 70's.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/25/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
State Insecurity: Why Are Top NSA Personnel Leaving in Droves?
Saturday, February 24, 2018
By Kate Harveston, Occupy.com | News Analysis
Thirty seconds: That's how long it takes to support the independent
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US intelligence bodies haven't particularly enjoyed their time in the
spotlight these last few years. The National Security Agency, or NSA,
occupies a particularly complicated and frustrating place in the collective
unconscious: It's an institution we must trust with our wellbeing on a
daily
basis, but it is also fundamentally unaccountable and untrustworthy. When
was the last time you voted for an NSA director?
Beginning with the Edward Snowden leaks in summer 2013, we've watched this
formerly hidden bureaucratic appendage grow more and more visible to the
public -- and what we've seen isn't encouraging. We now know that the NSA
regularly colludes with domestic internet service providers and spies
indiscriminately on the heads of foreign governments, usually without
justification. We also know that low morale within the agency has resulted
in the leak of sensitive state secrets. Some of those secrets involve the
way the NSA holds basic freedoms like privacy in contempt.
So it might feel like schadenfreude to watch this feared and reviled agency
fall into disarray over the past half decade. But the truth is that the NSA
still serves a vital purpose, now more than ever, yet it is barely any
longer able to do its job (ie. monitoring malign foreign actors,
anticipating the future moves of national governments, and keeping
America's
intel safe from prying eyes). The latest crisis: the NSA's hemorrhaging of
talent.
Hey, Where's Everyone Going?
Of the country's 17 intelligence-gathering apparatuses, the NSA is the most
prolific. The agency's headquarters, located in Fort Meade, Md., staffs
some
21,000 individuals. But their heavy workload is now imperiled by a chronic
flight of talent from the agency, described from within as an "epidemic".
It's hard to know exactly how bad of a situation we're talking about
because, of course, the NSA won't tell us details. But we do have some
rough
numbers:
. The NSA's current attrition rate for science, math and technology
specialists is 5.6 percent.
. The attrition rate for hackers and cyberattack specialists is as high as
9
percent.
. And some teams within the NSA have lost as much as half their staff.
Interestingly, between 2016 and 2017, the agency made the conspicuous
decision to remove all references to "openness," "honor" and "trust" from
its core values and mission statements. Which begs the question: Is it any
wonder nobody wants to work there?
The fact is, it's not the quantity of lost talent that may be most
worrisome, but the quality of that talent. The folks now leaving the NSA
are
extremely knowledgeable veterans. And while the agency can successfully
fill
those positions, new hires won't have the same quality of background and
experience.
A factor in the NSA's deterioration appears to be its general
mismanagement,
including unpopular philosophies concerning how best to "reorganize" the
agency. In 2016, NSA director Michael S. Rogers set about rethinking some
of
the "walls of granite" between the independent offices within the NSA.
Rogers called it among the NSA's most "comprehensive" restructuring moves
since the 1990s.
It sounded great on paper, but even during the Obama administration,
Rogers'
recommendations were met with hostility by Pentagon and other intelligence
officials. They said the restructuring wasn't so much a reduction of
redundancy but, in fact, the creation of separate chains of command. This
may represent a worsening of, rather than a solution for, the NSA's ongoing
identity crisis as physical threats continue to mesh with digital ones.
The NSA's Talent Shortage Isn't the Only One
In a broader sense, we're in the middle of a very real cybersecurity gap
across both the private and public spheres. The NSA may have had a run of
bad luck lately -- a great deal of which, most people might agree, it
deserves -- but the truth is that our country, across the board, appears
woefully unprepared for the emerging reality of cyber threats.
Michael Brengs, CRO of the identity and security management company Optimal
IdM, spoke at length with Occupy.com on the subject. "A recent survey shows
that nearly 70 percent of cybersecurity professionals claimed their
organization was impacted by the cybersecurity skills shortage," Brengs
said. "The ISACA, a non-profit information security advocacy group,
predicts
there will be a global shortage of 2 million cybersecurity professionals by
2019. And for every 10 cybersecurity job ads that appear on the career site
Indeed.com, only seven people even click on one of the ads, let alone
apply."
"One of the areas where the cybersecurity skills gap is the greatest is in
the field of identity and access management (IAM)," he continued. "This is
the ability of your system to make sure every person who accesses the
network at any time is an authorized and identifiable user and restricting
each person's level of access to exactly the amount the company allows them
to have. Overcoming the IAM skills gap is a huge challenge for
organizations, especially when the identity infrastructure is architected,
maintained and supported by a few internal employees. Any one of these
individuals leaving the organization can put that infrastructure at great
risk."
It has always been tempting to believe that there is a clear firewall
between government and private enterprise. But situations like this help
reveal just how entwined all of our fates really are. Identity and access
management are complex topics that the average voter might be tempted to
ignore. But security within privately owned companies is hardly the only
thing at stake.
Experts have warned for years that the slow death of traceable paper
ballots, combined with ever-more-vulnerable electronic voting machines,
means the democratic process itself is on the line. Other estimates are
less
dire, but it's clear we don't yet fully understand this new threat
landscape.
Depending whom you ask, American elections are either unhackable or
extremely hackable. Perhaps nobody actually knows. But given the degree to
which technology has pervaded our social lives, commerce and politics, it's
clear we don't need fewer cybersecurity thought-leaders in government -- we
need far more.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Kate Harveston
Kate Harveston is a journalist and a member of the CODEPINK communications
team.
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