A Day or Week In A Life Of An Security Professional

[xor]

I'm looking for people to please describe what they do during the average day or week at work. No roll outs, no incidents, just the routine grind from the time they get in, to the time they leave. Can also describe sys admin duties.

xor

Found what I was looking for nevermind

[octalpus]

Re: A Day or Week In A Life Of An Security Professional

Found what I was looking for nevermind

Did you really? Or did you find some glamorous mock-up? Cuz dayum dude... I had no idea what I was getting in to!

For the benefit of everyone else (and my personal venting purposes), a week in the life:

Saturday night: Wash clothes, review SOW and project plans for upcoming week, prepare templates with client info for the week's status reports and final deliverable outline.

Sunday: Wake up early, rotate laundry, carefully pack all tech and other items that have to be taken out of the bag at security into backpack. Magically stuff 2 weeks worth of clothing and supplies into 1 rolling carry-on. (Not that I'll be home in 2 weeks... that's just a nice supply to have before having to do laundry at the hotel, usually with shampoo because for some reason they're always out of laundry soap) Catch ridiculously early flight out, since all of the good sales people will always be on the coast directly opposite the most qualified consultant for the gig. Arrive at hotel, try to force a smile when the desk clerk asks if you'd like your same room.

Monday: Wake up, check address on phone or notepad to figure out what city you're in. Quickly run an iron over clothes that should have been hung up the night before, if only your flight hadn't been delayed for 4 hours and you had arrived before midnight. Spend majority of the day meeting with the client and attempting to get IP addresses for your laptops as well as a listing of ranges to be tested. Do some quick enumeration and other simple checking, call it a day, gorge self on whatever passes for food in whatever random city. Return to hotel, make mental promise to self to work out after writing docs. Begin writing up overview and enumeration results, pass out halfway through.

Tues-Thurs: Wake up, curse at self for not working out the night before, promise to do it tonight. Scan, validate, and otherwise spend a few hours doing the nifty cool stuff that you could have sworn was 90% of your job but turns out to be more like 10%. And that's if you count sitting there watching the progress bar on your scans. Write overview of each finding for daily status report, copy and paste into deliverable to be edited with detail later. Gorge self on local fare, make mental promise to visit the hotel gym after writing docs. Finish documenting enumeration and start filling in details on findings as well as researching anything interesting that might not be so easy to exploit. Pass out halfway through. Repeat for 2 more days.

Friday: Wrap up week's efforts, give final outbrief presentation if it's the end of a gig. Take off at a reasonable hour to arrive at airport, knowing that security will always take 2x longer than you've allotted. Curse at self for not working out, especially considering how uncomfortable the flight back is going to be with such a tight waistband. Have eureka moment halfway to airport, realise you were sitting on a juicy 'sploit but can't do anything about it now, because you're off-site and done with the engagement. Panic as you see your flight time is rapidly approaching and you're only halfway through the security queue. Clear security, sprint to your gate, see that your flight is delayed. Force a smile as airport bartender asks if you'd like your usual. Finally board plane, try not to smirk at the poor holiday travelers who didn't have enough status and got bumped. Attempt to write docs on plane, pass out instead. ((Arrive at home, attempt to write docs, find the weight of the attention-starved cats on your arm to be too tempting, pass out.) XOR (Miss out on a few hours of quality cat and laundry time to attend $PRESSING_SOCIAL_ENGAGEMENT in another city, since the only time for any social activity is Friday night and Saturday))

Saturday: Spend day frantically trying to finish docs while intending to do laundry but failing miserably until it's just about time for sleep. Fully intend to visit gym while home, get too caught up with writing docs and miss opportunity. GOTO Saturday night

[xor]

Re: A Day or Week In A Life Of An Security Professional

The best part of traveling on business is by far coming home. I hope you have someone watching your cat while your on the road :). I have 2 Siamese cats(a.k.a glue1 & glue2 because they stick to me as soon as I walk in the door) so I can't go far for long without neurotic repercussions.

Anyway from what I got from my lurking was that pretty much everyone states the same thing. That they spend 90% of the time doing stuff that they never thought they would have to, and 10% of the time doing stuff that is the core of their profession instead of the other way around.

I had many different jobs and it always seems to be the same way. 90% justification and reporting to people who either don't care, don't want to be bothered because they are so busy, or don't understand.

So it seems to be the same way for most professions. You have to wear so many hats today while trying to specialize. One particular job, required me to be an engineer, customer advocate, and negotiator all while trying to get the job done as cheaply and expeditiously as possible; without any real power and 100% accountability.

xor