The federal government of the United States is losing cyber security experts at an alarming rate. Take, for example, the head of Secure Voting Systems in the Department of Homeland Security, Jeanette Manfra — she plans on leaving government employ at the end of this year in order to join Google Security.
Four months ago Joe Schatz, who was chief security officer for the White House, bailed to join a startup security consulting firm called TechCentrics.
And the list just goes on and on. With security concerns now at unparalleled levels for federal agencies across the board, why are so many skilled security experts jumping ship?
The answer is pretty basic. Government employees with expert security skills and experience are suffering from the same kind of salary ceiling that all other federal employees must deal with. At one or two percent increases a year, and never more than that, a cyber security expert can become extremely frustrated when he or she sees their civilian counterparts raking in millions as consultants or as CEOs of their own cyber security startups. Funding for cyber security enterprises is so easy to get that the world on Wall Street is that the founders of such companies need to bring a wheelbarrow to the bank to take away the huge amounts of seed money made available to them.
This is a problem that Uncle Sam will need to address soon, or face World War Three on the internet.