Commiseration and Possibly Advice?

Hello,

First, I need to ask that my name and details of my recent employment be held in confidence. I am looking for a way to deal with my own form of burnout. I very much enjoy IT and infosec in particular. I got my start in professional security in 2003 when I was hired as a systems administrator for <redacted>. I worked there for 4 years as a systems/security admin as well as an author and instructor. I loved the work, but hated the city that I was located in. I took a job for more money that allowed us to move to a city that my family and I love. The problem is the work available in this city is killing me.

Since I left <redacted>, my family and I have been much happier with our home, and location, but I have gotten increasingly frustrated with my work. None of the places that I have worked in the last few years seem to have any desire to actually secure their infrastructure. One place even told me that they only had an infosec team to fullfill a regulatory requirement.

My current organization is a hospital, and the security and network infrastructure are among the worst I’ve ever seen. I gave them a basic assessment of the problems when I started, and they said that we would fix them. I wrote project plans and was told that we would work to fix the systemic problems and reulatory issues. Nothing has been done. We hired a pen testing company to confirm my findings, and find more problems, management agreed to fix the problems found. Nothing has been done. I have tried every trick, I can think of, and the org still refuses to let me or anyone else in the group act to fix the glaring and horrific problems in the org.

I realized 2 months ago that I was so frustrated with my work that it was impacting my home life. I don’t want my son to learn from me that all work sucks. I’m tired of complaining to my wife about the same problems day in and day out. The only things I can think of to solve the problem are either changing careers, or finding a job that lets me get into the offensive side of security. I’d you have any advice for someone in my situation, I’d love to hear it. Even if you have no advice, thank you for taking the time to read my poorly proofread and extremely long email. Writing it out has helped some.

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Category: Healthcare, Perspectives