Dear Annie: I'll be starting my senior year in college in a month or so, majoring in computer science, and I'm getting kind of nervous about what the job market will be like when I graduate. I keep hearing about tech jobs moving overseas, IT people getting laid off, etc. Did I pick the wrong major? -- Panic Button

Dear Panic Button: Not at all. True, Challenger Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm that tracks job cuts, reports that 99,527 techies lost their jobs in the first half of this year. That's 56% more than in the first six months of 2004, which was not such a hot year for techies either. Luckily, there are a few bright spots in the IT job picture, and one of them is information security. The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, or (ISC)2, is a nonprofit group that certifies security specialists around the world. The group has put together a career guide available on its website that you may find interesting. It says that demand for security specialists is growing 13% a year in the U.S. Right now, there are about 1.3 million of these folks worldwide, a total that is expected to reach 2.1 million by 2008.

The guide describes 14 different areas of expertise within the electronic security field. Among them are access control (limiting how users enter and leave a system); business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning (in the event of emergencies); and "malicious code" (the art of preventing and purging viruses, worms, and other cyber nasties). The guide also spells out a typical security professional's career path, along with the different levels of certification required at each step. The most basic certification, which you can pursue after about two years of work experience, is the SSCP (Systems Security Certified Practitioner) credential. (ISC)2's website offers free study guides for the SSCP exam, along with a list of other recommended resources and seminars to help you prepare.

How do you get the two years' experience you need in order to be eligible to take the test? "Lots of large organizations have entry-level IT security positions, but you really could start in any entry-level tech job and make the move over to security," says Steve Lipner, who has been in this field for 35 years and is director of security engineering strategy for Microsoft's security business and technology unit. Lipner is a CISSP, which stands for Certified Information Systems Security Professional, a level higher than an SSCP. "It's a super-rewarding career," he says. "You are really in a position to help make people's lives safer and better."

Jared Greene, a security maven for the past two years, agrees: "It's a blast. I hack into banks' computer systems for a living, legally. It's fun to figure out how to make them more secure." Greene is a senior systems engineer at InfoSight with a string of credentials that sounds like alphabet soup: CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, CCNA, and CCDP. He works from his home in Orlando, Fla. Before going into this line of work, Greene did a stint in electronic intelligence for the military, set up inventory-control systems for Disney, and earned a pile of Cisco certifications. "Cisco knowledge is really helpful for anyone who wants to go into security," he says, "because then you know how systems are put together, so you can see how they could be taken apart."

Many of Greene's clients are banks, who -- for obvious reasons -- are big employers of security specialists. (So are insurance companies, government agencies, and health care providers, among many others.) To show his customers how vulnerable they are to hackers, Greene has learned all the tricks for sidestepping safeguards and cruising around at will inside their systems. His record, so far anyway, for hacking into a major bank: eight minutes and twelve seconds. Good thing he's on our side...

Friends, many, many thanks to all who have responded to my request last week to tell me what figures of speech bug you most at work. Your nominations for "the Mallies" -- my moniker for an award to be given to the Most Annoying Lingo in use in offices today -- are smart, acerbic, and hilarious. One thing is clear: There's a surprising amount of agreement out there on which expressions really ought to be retired from the lexicon before they make us all crazy. I'll announce the winners, and a couple of dozen runners-up, next week.

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