These days you can barely even swing your Fendi purse without knocking over ten computer nerds, so fortunately completing the homework for your Digital Society class is a breeze! I reached out to my younger brother, Stuart Jakins, who has worked at a company called SecurityMetrics as a Technical Support Specialist for the past five years.
According to Wikipedia, SecurityMetrics is "a multinational merchant data security and compliance company headquartered in Orem, Utah" that fields "over 132,000 calls a month and employs nearly 400 employees". The company is a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) vendor that also qualifies as a PCI Forensic Investigator, which I thought was quite interesting. If I had to work there that is the department that I would request!
Stuart spends his shift on the computer as well as on the phone with customers who are typically business owners and merchants. Technical support includes and covers the set up of firewalls and security for the computer networks that run the business. Storage of credit card numbers on the merchant's computers requires documentation of the processing and due to the sensitive and private information, proof of antivirus software and firewalls is a necessity. Also, if a merchant is trying to process credit cards through an IP address or a website, then SecurityMetrics first scans the IP address and website to verify the safety and security. Stuart summarized his job detail as explaining security measures to merchants and business owners to ensure their compliance with the standards that the credit card companies enforce.
Hmm...sounds quite boring and confusing to me! After further reading online about SecurityMetrics I learned that it was started in 2000 by a man named Brad Caldwell. The goal of the company was to test website security, soon becoming officially certified as a security assessor for the four major credit cards in the United States: Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Okay so now it made a bit more sense to me: a security assessor. After reading that I understood more completely than I did from interviewing my brother. (Sorry Stu!)
I'm glad there are people in the world like your brother that can do the stuff that I never could. My younger brother is also a tech nerd and is good at what he does. Everyone is wired a little differently what would we do without those techy people keeping us connected and running all the time??
ReplyDeleteIt might sound boring but it's companies like this that keep our bank accounts safe, unfortunately we live in a world were hackers are trying everything to get cc. numbers and with the huge hacks on Lowe's or places like Target we need more security than ever.
ReplyDeleteI wish I new some computer nerds. I had a hard time trying to find someone to interview, but I also was looking for someone that worked directly with computers or networks.
ReplyDeleteI can't set up firewalls for them (liability issues) but I can advise them on the best security practices and where to get help. The actual set up is up to them. Other than that spot on.
ReplyDelete