Does It Make Sense To Hire A Convicted Cracker For Security Work?

from the too-much-risk? dept

InformationWeek is looking at whether or not companies are willing to hire hackers who were previously convicted of committing computer related crimes to help them with their own security (and, yes, before people go nuts in the comments, not all "hackers" are bad, but this is about those who broke the law and were convicted of it). The general consensus seems to be that high profile convicted hackers do end up with jobs -- but not in doing security work. Often it's in writing or speaking about it. Basically, many companies have found that there are many qualified security experts who can do the job who never broke the law -- and, as one person points out: "Criminal records prove nothing except that you were stupid enough to get caught in the first place." That may be a bit extreme, as some of the prosecutions over "hacking" that occurred a while back were based more on fear than on a real understanding of what was done. However, it does point out that a conviction hardly means that you're qualified as a security expert.

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