Who Makes a Better Security Administrator Between Developers & System Administrators (SAs)? How Do We Upskill Them?
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...