I recently conducted a LinkedIn poll with the following question: “Who makes better security administrators: software developers or SAs?” The following image shows the outcome: SAs, rather than developers, were chosen by an overwhelming majority (40/49), as the better option for security administration. Verdict Many information technology (IT) professionals agree that both SAs and developers can become good security administrators. They further agree that they both require extra training to broaden the skills gap required for the role. The latter (developers) require extra effort in areas: networking, operating system (OS) and application administration, whereas the former needs to bolster their database knowledge, learn general programming language structure, web application and services, and scripting – coding-centric skills so to say. This is not to say that security administrators are a special breed of professionals, or that they are higher in hierarchy than SAs and developers, b...
I obtained my CCNA v3 recently and I must say it’s exciting to be officially certified! I say officially because I, like many people, have actually been configuring CISCO routers and switches in SMEs for some years now. In particular, I love wireless, and I have been setting CISCO wireless Access Points for some time, but mostly low end Linksys APs - not that impressive, huh? I work for a small to medium-size NGO that deals in health. And one thing that is rife in such organizations is the fact that they tend to hire one IT personnel to do all IT work – technical and user/help desk support. The common title is IT officer which basically means you do everything IT, and that includes setting wall clocks – see what I’m saying? I know I’m describing someone’s pain out there but enough of that for now. The reason I’m writing this is to state my love for CISCO Mobility Express, a feature that saved my day today. We recently acquired the Aironet 3800 series, a very impressive AP ...