IT Security Coordinator

Hours

You would normally work 35 to 40 hours a week, although you may be on a call-out rota to deal with problems outside of office hours.
You would be mainly office based, but if you worked for a consultancy or were self-employed, you may have to travel to visit clients.

Income

Rates of pay are often negotiable dependant on experience and length of contract.
Salaries can fall anywhere between £25,000 and £60,000 a year.

Opportunities

You can work for public service organisations, local authorities, government departments, financial institutions and software manufacturers. You could also work for specialist IT security consultancies.
Recent surveys of the IT industry suggest that information security is a high priority for IT directors. The expansion of wireless networks (WiFi) and mobile technologies have also led to a corresponding rise in the nature of security threats.
Your promotion options include network management, IT project management and security consultancy. Eventually, you could work for the police, security services and specialist law firms to carry out forensic investigation of computer-based crimes.
You may find the following useful for job vacancies and general reading.

Entry Requirements

You can get into IT security by completing qualifications at degree level or higher, or by gaining skills on the job. If you take the university route, you would need to complete a degree or postgraduate award in subjects such as network security, computer science (with security options) or forensic computing. These would allow you to start on a company's graduate training scheme.
Alternatively, you could use your work experience in related IT jobs to move into this career, for example as a systems analyst, database administrator or network engineer. See the related job profiles for more information about these roles.
Employers will usually look for experience as an IT professional, with some responsibility for network security.
Your experience should cover different operating systems like Windows, Unix and Linux, and security technologies and procedures, such as:

• firewalls and anti-virus software
• intrusion detection systems (IDS)
• encryption techniques, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
• authentication (passwords, digital certificates and, more recently, biometrics)
• penetration testing and vulnerability scanning.

IT security coordinators (also called information security analysts) plan and carry out security measures to protect clients' information and data from unauthorised access, deliberate attack, theft and corruption.
As a security coordinator, you would deal with a range of threats to electronic information, including:

• hacking
• viruses, worms, spyware and Trojans
• denial of service attacks – overloading systems with useless data to bring them to a standstill
• 'phishing' – luring users into leaving confidential details on spoof websites
• 'pharming' – redirecting users to fake websites by hijacking genuine website addresses
• abuse of permissions by authorised system users.

Skills and Knowledge

• an excellent knowledge of IT security systems, tools and procedures
• excellent communication skills
• strong problem solving skills
• good project management skills
• the ability to interpret and evaluate data accurately
• an understanding of confidentiality issues
• a commitment to keep up to date with emerging security threats, technologies and trends
• the ability to work under pressure and to deadlines
• a proactive approach and confidence to take decisions
• a knowledge of information security standards and legislation.