Network Security Perfect Field For Latinos In The U.S.

By Daniel Esquivel

Network security is a great field for Latinos in the U.S. to work in for lots of reasons, not only because it’s what I do, but because it’s a growing field and is destined to grow more in the future. My name is Daniel Esquivel and I recently began to work in this field, even though I studied government in my undergraduate career.

I came to network security when I found myself unhappy working in retail and looking for a career that would give me both fulfillment and security — something that’s important for my family and for my own personal dreams for the future. The Internet is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life, not just for things like Facebook, but everything else, too. Your banking information, shopping, bill paying, phone infrastructure, everything is going online. To keep all this information secure, the country needs a new class of people familiar with cloud technology, IT, network security, applications, and much more.

That’s where people like me come in.

Cyber security is one of the biggest obstacles to the future of the Internet because everything is going online and there has to be a way to keep it secure. This becomes a problem because the Internet, when it was first created, was designed as a means to share information — it was never designed as something to be secured. As a network security administrator, what I do is create solutions for customers to try to protect that information. You can see the potential for growth in this industry, what’s more, it’s a field that offers good pay and security.

One of the things I like most about this field is that, as opposed to retail where you’re not enriching yourself, you’re enriching the company, in this field it’s easier to advance in that you don’t have to suck up to anybody — it’s all how hard you work and how hard you study. If you have certain certifications from CISCO, for example, no one can take those away from you.  If one company doesn’t want to promote you, another one will. There’s no politics involved.

I think this is especially salient for Latinos, since we’re often at the mercy of what someone above us will let us do. But, in this field, it’s all you. You’re basically taking your own future in your own hands. An added bonus is that, there’s so much to learn and know, I’ll never get bored. People in this career do not pay you to know concepts, they pay you to have knowledge and application of that knowledge, so you don’t necessarily need “degrees” to advance.

The basic three tenets of this job are: Confidentiality, integrity and availability. You have to uphold those three tenets no matter what. Information is only to be accessed by people who have access to that information. Integrity means if I send you a message over Facebook, someone doesn’t come in in the middle of that and rewrite it and make it seem like I wrote it. Then there’s availability; the most secure computer in the world is a computer that is unplugged and turned off. But that doesn’t do you any good because you can’t access the information on it anymore; you ensure that that information stays accessible.

In essence, you’re a guard dog over a treasure. You are trained to let certain people access it, you make sure no one messes with it, you make sure that it stays there so people who have access to it can get to it. This, as you can see, creates the need for ever more network security professions. It’s growing and growing because, the more we put our lives online, more crime is happening online. Debt by cybercrime outweighs debt in the real world now, for example, and 90% of emails are malicious while 60% of all traffic online is considered malicious.

Another reason this field is great for Latinos is that, if you want to work for the government in network security, you have to be a native born citizen because they can’t outsource that job. There are already tens of millions of Latinos in this country, and as the immigrants who are here have U.S.-born children, many more of them will be added to the population. Because we’re here, it’s a growing field, it’s something that’s lucrative, and as  Latino myself, not a lot of us have gone into it. Security is hard to outsource, and for the millions of us here who have good credit, no arrests and no family members who are terrorists, the field is ripe for the taking.

Finally, Spanish is a huge, huge deal.  We have a lot of Spanish speaking customers. After Canada, all of South America is really big. So, speaking Spanish helps a lot. Any language other than English really helps, but Spanish is a big one. Especially when it comes to cultural tid bits, like knowing that someone named Aguilar Martínez is Mr. Aguilar, not Mr. Martínez.

So, to put it simply, network security would be a great field for Latinos to pursue. My father is a mechanic, and I know from experience that’s a really important job, and what’s amazing is that I kind of see myself doing the same thing as him — but with computers. And the outcome is that I’m happy, love my job, have great benefits and know that my future will be bright.

Daniel Esquivel works as a network security administrator at a hosting company in South Texas.