Interview with Kreig Ecklund
Title: CIO
Employer: Mercy Ships (www.mercyships.org), a charity that operates a fleet of floating hospitals that serve people in developing nations around the world.
Background: Ecklund, 34, joined Mercy Ships in 1998 as an onboard network and systems administrator. Three years later, he was promoted to CIO. Contact information: ecklundk@mercyships.org.
IT staff: 35 people serve onboard the ships, in offices around the world and at the international operations centre in Garden Valley, Tex.
Toughest challenge: Recruiting skilled professionals for jobs with no official salary. Mercy Ships has a fund-raising program in which IT workers, including Ecklund, ask friends, former employers, church groups and others for financial contributions that can be earmarked to pay their salaries.
We caught up with Ecklund at the CIO Executive Summit in Houston on March 24.
CW: Tell me about the people on your IT staff.
KE: We get people in what I call the "success to significance" category. They want to leave their mark on the world. These are people who are generally self-supporting, often early retirees. We also find there are a lot of younger people who want to have an impact on the world. Some of these people come for a year. We have one Canadian whose employer allows him to work remotely as a systems administrator. He works for his employer 30 hours a week, and he works for us 30 hours a week.
CW: What IT positions do you have open?
KE: We're looking for Java developers, systems analysts and database administrators.
CW: Are there career benefits you can offer in lieu of a salary?
KE: For young people, it's an opportunity to build a résumé. I think there's also a very good opportunity for quick advancement. If you're good, you'll move up faster in our organization than in others. I'm very young — 34 — and I'm a CIO.
— Julia King
More Internet connections mean more IT security jobs
By 2010, more than 14 billion devices with computer chips will be connected to the Internet. That includes cars, car tires, household appliances, electronic entertainment gear and even shoes and clothing. Even more important is that many of those devices will be capable of executing mini-applications downloaded from other Internet-connected devices.
For instance, chips in tires might download and execute programs to gauge air pressure and measure wear on the tread. Executing such programs will, of course, require user identification and authentication, and therein lies the good news for IT security professionals, according to Forrester Research Inc. CEO George Colony.
"It's a good time to make a living as a chief security officer," Colony told CIOs attending the CIO Executive Summit in Houston last month. "Now, of course, everyone knows not to open executable programs because of viruses, but we're headed toward the executable Internet, and that means greater security."
For 2004, Forrester has upgraded its previous forecast of a 1.7 per cent increase in IT spending to a five per cent increase, Colony says. Companies will spend the most on upgrading IT security, including hiring security professionals and improving disaster recovery capabilities, he says.
— Julia King
Numbers Crunch: IT Security
-US$13.5 billion: Worldwide financial impact of major virus attacks in 2003
-US$11.1 billion: Worldwide financial impact of major virus attacks in 2002
-Seven per cent: Projected annual growth rate of the U.S. government's IT security spending over the next four years
-215,000: Number of identity theft complaints filed in the U.S. in 2003
-33 per cent: Percentage by which U.S. identity theft reports increased over 2002
-572: Number of IT security specialist jobs listed on Dice.com during the week of March 22, 2004
Sources: Computer Economics Inc., Input Inc., Federal Trade Commission, Dice Inc.
In information security, how many employees (full-time equivalents) focus on each of the following:
-Security administration: 4.6
-Technical development and support: 4.1
-Architecture and engineering: 2.9
-Disaster recovery and backup: 2.5
-Compliance and reporting: 2.15
-Other: 2.7
-Average security staff size: 20.9
Source: March 2003 Chief Security Officer Magazine survey of 408 IT security professionals
Candidates with security clearances command top dollar
Job seekers with active government security clearances are very much in demand and can command up to $10,000 more in salary than their noncleared counterparts, according to May Jo Wentzel, a human resources generalist at Government Micro Resources Inc., a government IT contractor in Manassas, Va.
In the past year, the company has experienced a tenfold increase in the number of open positions for workers with security clearances.
Experts say the surge in demand is due to new initiatives in homeland security and wars on multiple fronts, which have produced thousands of new government contracts and jobs to be filled.
Some employers are even willing to overlook a lack of specific skills in those candidates who have high-level government clearances, according to Rachel Staras, founder of ClearanceJobs.com, an Internet job board dedicated to candidates with active government security clearances.
"With the process to clear a previously uncleared worker still taking up to 18 months, employers are finding it more cost-effective to hire someone with fewer skills and train them than (it is to get clearance for) an uncleared job seeker," Staras notes.
— Julia King