The demand is there for IT professionals specializing in security. According to Meta Group research, one in five IT positions involves networking professionals, and budgets for security are growing 25 percent each year, a trend that will continue for at least the next three to five years. The manager of network security combines technical and risk-management expertise with strong business knowledge. It's essential to understand the organization's LANs, WANs, phone systems and remote equipment. He or she also needs to be able to discriminate among the features in vendors' offerings, as well as to analyze product pricing.
Sales depend heavily on making sure firewalls and other security measures work.
In this case, the manager of network security must communicate regularly with business managers, sales division heads and the CRM program management office, as well as with IT, to understand applications and business processes, and to ensure effective risk management. Those demands mean that interpersonal skills are a must, as is the ability to manage a team. The manager of network security also needs to take on a project-management role. The responsibilities of that role include setting up and enforcing policies, determining risks to equipment and systems, prioritizing security maintenance and managing failures. The security manager must develop a disaster recovery plan and ensure adherence to regular testing and monitoring.