Tips for Entering the Penetration Testing Field by Ed Skoudis.
From the post:
It’s an exciting time to be a professional penetration tester. As malicious computer attackers amp up the number and magnitude of their breaches, the information security industry needs an enormous amount of help in proactively finding and resolving vulnerabilities. Penetration testers who are able to identify flaws, understand them, and demonstrate their business impact through careful exploitation are an important piece of the defensive puzzle.
In the courses I teach on penetration testing, I’m frequently asked about how someone can land their first job in the field after they’ve acquired the appropriate technical skills and gained a good understanding of methodologies. Also, over the past decade, I’ve counseled a lot of my friends and acquaintances as they’ve moved into various penetration testing jobs. Although there are many different paths to pen test nirvana, let’s zoom into three of the most promising. It’s worth noting that these three paths aren’t mutually exclusive either. I know many people who started on the first path, jumped to the second mid-way, and later found themselves on path #3. Or, you can jumble them up in arbitrary order.
…
Career advice and a great listing of resources for any aspiring penetration “tester.”
If you do penetration work for a government, you may be a national hero. If you do commercial penetration testing, not a national hero but not on the run either. If you do non-sanctioned penetration work, life is uncertain. Same skill, same activity. Go figure.