Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Defense Deparment Eyes DefCon for New Recruits

Robert McMillan writes on ComputerWorld:

The U.S. Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: The yearly Defcon hacking conference, which runs Thursday through Sunday in Las Vegas.

Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions decided to come back again.

"The principal reason that I'm here is to recruit," said Convertino, commander of the U.S. Air Force's 318th Information Operations Group, speaking Thursday during a panel discussion at Defcon's sister conference, Black Hat. "We have many empty jobs, empty slots that we can't fill."

Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon "Meet the Fed" panel on 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said.

posted by Fergie @ 8/01/2009 04:08:00 PM