IT Risk Jobs - A Great Time to be Looking or Hiring

The advances in technology in the past 30 years or so have had a significant impact on the working and home lives of millions of people. Indeed many tasks that previously required going through numerous hoops can now be performed in the blink of an eye, whilst people have had their horizons broadened and their access to all sorts of information and media enhanced.

However, for all the benefits of this digital revolution, which has certainly transformed corporate life as much as any other area of society, there has been something of a price to pay. As more and more tasks are facilitated by IT systems and services, so companies and their customers have come to rely increasingly on such systems. When something goes wrong, therefore, or a link in the IT chain is damaged deliberately or accidentally, the fallout can be devastating.

Consequently, these days, the onus of enterprise risk management falls heavily on the IT department. Moreover, IT risk management has become increasingly professionalised, and companies of all sizes are regularly hiring qualified personnel for high-profile IT risk jobs.

IT-related mishaps in the past decade have emphasised the importance of having experienced professionals in place doing key IT risk jobs. For instance, a global game console company experienced an intrusion which resulted in theft of user information, including financial details. Meanwhile, a UK government department came under fire for losing two CDs containing child benefit data relating to some 25 million people.

The IT risk jobs of today can be varied in terms of job title and scale, but there are some core components, all of which are directed at anticipating, preventing or mitigating the worst effects of such accidents or disasters as those above.

First and foremost an IT risk professional will need to analyse an existing IT setup whilst, at the same time, looking for loopholes. This analytical component requires a combination of objectivity, and an ability to get on with different types of people. In order to get to the truth of complex systems IT risk practitioners need to be able to put fellow IT professionals at their ease.

Many IT risk jobs also have a strong planning component. There may be a plan of action to plug any existing security gaps, and, at the same time the IT risk professional must think the unthinkable: planning for contingencies, possible disasters or misfortunes that no one else dares to imagine.

However, IT risk jobs tend to focus more on ensuring the company’s IT risk documentation is up to scratch. This leads to the other key component of IT risk jobs: ensuring that a company can demonstrate full compliance with national and international IT security standards, such as the ISO/IEC 27001 and 27002.

All in all, IT risk jobs are becoming increasingly important in large organisations and enterprises, and are often well remunerated. IT is not unusual, these days, to find someone with overall responsibility for IT risk with a seat on the board of a blue chip company.

Indeed, there has never been a better time to be looking for IT risk jobs or hiring an IT risk