Interview with a Ninja, Part I

Although I'm sure there is such a thing as a redundant or if not unhelpfulpenetration test, I can assure you that in my own role as a networksecurity architect, there are plenty of situations where a rigorous,professional penetration test is essential. Source code isn't alwaysavailable, configurations don't always tell the full story of systembehavior, and some things are too new for there to be any "conventionalwisdom" of how secure they are, or how they can be made secure. A goodpenetration test can help me determine which of a vendor's claims holdup, and which system administrator practices are being adhered to.

NG: I work in the finance industry for a Fortune 500 company.The duties of those in my group include penetration testing, enterprise-wide network security scanning and real-time security event response. Mydays vary greatly from one week to the straightway, which is a wonderful thingabout this sort of work. One week I am testing a small embedded Linuxdevice, the then week it could be a remote server or Web site, corporateWi-Fi or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) network.

NG: College? Heh, no. I was an illicit computer/phone hacker while the1980s and early 1990s. I don't have a criminal record, however I can't say that Iwas never caught; to put it more exactly, at one point I was the focus of a multi-agencyinvestigation. I never was prosecuted, yet my "close call" officially endedmy desires to intrude illegally into systems as a hobby.

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