The big security/storage crossover: Is your job safe? [Part Two: The analyst]
Storage and security staff sometimes possess the same skills. What does that mean for your job prospects in the field? In this second part of a four part series, TechTarget ANZ asks Gartner's Phil Sergeant what lies ahead for professionals in these disciplines.
Storage a security professionals share a small pool of skills, but the deep specialisation required to excel in each field means it will be at least two to three years before professionals will need to even consider training in the other discipline.
That's the opinion of Phil Sargeant, Gartner's Australian Research Director for server, storage and storage area networking.
"There is some commonality in things like key management," he says. "IBM, Sun and others offer products that offer can encrypt data onto tape. So there is some key management, which is in some respect associated with security, already involved in some areas of storage."
"It is in this area that there will be overlap where people have previously been security professionals, as there are security officers that have control over key management."
"There will certainly be overlap."
But that overlap is minor, and Sargeant does not believe that professionals will find themselves challenged to demonstrate multiple competencies in the next two to three years.
"I do not think that security people will need to know about SANs and ISCSI and all that," he says. "There will be time before the security elements are in the storage product set and vice versa."
"EMC now owns RSA, and therefore some interesting technology. But it will take some time for them to embed it into their offerings, in exactly the same way that we have seen with Symantec and Veritas."
"They still have separate offerings and it is taking a long time for those things to come together."
Even when the mega-mergers do result in merged products, Sargeant believes distinct experts will still have a role.
"There are so many elements to security," he says. "And not every player talks about every element."
"It depends on the vendor. They all say they do security but none of them do it all."
Neither EMC nor Symantec are likely to change this status quo any time soon, Sargeant believes, making it all-but certain that security specialists will have a niche to fill for many years to come.
The big security/storage crossover: Is your job safe?
- Part One: The recruiter
- Part Two: The analyst
- Part Three: Why consumers count
- Part Four: The new age of abstraction
