Insight launches Security Fellows Program
A tuition-free, 7-week professional fellowship designed to be your bridge to a thriving career in security
Insight is launching the Insight Security Fellows Program, a professional training fellowship to help systems engineers, software engineers, and data analysts transition into full-time careers as security engineers, data privacy engineers, and advanced security analysts. This free, full-time, 7 week fellowship based in San Francisco will start in September 2019. Fellows in this program will build secure applications and platforms using the latest technologies in the security ecosystem, with mentorship from leaders in the security field. Following the 7-week program, Fellows will interview for full-time roles at leading security teams in Silicon Valley, receiving guidance and support until they accept a full-time offer to join a top company.
Trust as the foundation of the modern tech stack
Our apps and connected devices produce a deluge of data that is collected with the goal of improving and funding the services that enrich our lives. While this model fuels many of today’s businesses on the internet, it comes with a significant tradeoff: an unprecedented amount of user data has been stock piled and is at risk of being exposed through security breaches. Thus, the development of products and services that leverage user data brings a new ethical responsibility for today’s tech community: securing the infrastructure for the services we use everyday, and protecting the privacy of our data.
Unfortunately, the concerns over lax security practices have been vindicated far too often in recent years. Every record of personally identifiable information leaked erodes the trust of users, risking the value of new features that teams work so hard to build. With the latest round of security breaches and data leaks, we’ve reached a tipping point where users will no longer tolerate the tradeoff between privacy and free features. If a company treats security and data privacy as afterthoughts, then users will vote with their clicks and take their data elsewhere.
As a result, companies need to ensure security and privacy are core components of their products. Engineering teams need to prioritize preventing security breaches as much as they focus on new features or code quality. If your users don’t believe that you’re looking out for their best interest, every feature and application you build could be jeopardized— trust must be at the foundation of the modern tech stack.
Fortunately, many companies are taking on these challenges with new teams dedicated to protecting their users in their security orgs and beyond. Security engineering teams are leveraging a new technologies in cloud automation and data engineering to defend against security vulnerabilities at a new scale. InfoSec teams dedicated to anti-abuse and data privacy are using recent advances in machine learning and engineering to help secure their services. Data stewardship programs are thoughtfully considering their use of data, ensuring that collected information is truly useful to the end user. A new field of data ethics is forming amongst industry leaders, with the goal of actively ensuring algorithms don’t discriminate against protected classes or have deleterious effects on society.
While there’s a huge demand for security engineers and analysts with this new skill set, there are few with the required knowledge in the security and data privacy domain. More and more companies are realizing that their future depends on their ability to earn the trust of their users, and a quality security team will be a key competitive advantage to their long-term growth. They’re searching for a new generation of thoughtful and talented security professionals, but are struggling to find enough of those individuals with the relevant skills.
For years, organizations have tried to invest more in security, only to face a lack of qualified engineers and analysts. Industry experts have been concerned about the shortage of security professionals, expecting the number of unfilled positions to increase to 3.5 million by 2021, a more than 300% increase since 2014. Despite urgent calls for more education and training from leaders — from computer science leaders to Fortune 500 executives to the White House — the demand has far outpaced the supply. The skills gap is even sharper in the advanced security roles that require knowledge of data, cloud infrastructure, and machine learning skills on top of the security domain expertise.
At the same time, there is a healthy contingent of engineers, IT professionals, scientists, and analysts who are passionate about data privacy and securing the internet from bad actors. This group has 90% of skills they need to succeed in the field of security— with the necessary fundamentals in software and systems engineering — but need the hands-on experience with the contemporary tech stack that security teams are looking for. Despite the potential of these candidates, many teams can’t afford to take a chance for such a critical role — they want to see relevant experience working in the security domain.
This is the mission of the Insight Security Fellows Program — to bridge the gap between ambitious professionals with a passion for security, and the companies looking to do the right thing for their users.
About the Security Fellows Program
Every Fellow who completes the program will build on their foundation, and come out of the 7-weeks knowing fundamental security topics like penetration testing, networking protocols, scripting, identity access management and malware defense. Fellows will join a network of ambitious software engineers, systems engineers, IT professionals, and data analysts who share common goals, but wield a diverse set of complementary skills. Fellows learn the same way as in the industry, by collaborating and working through real-world challenges with peers and experienced alumni who solve related problems in their industry roles.
Additionally, each Fellow gains an advanced specialization in security by completing a substantial project during the course of the program on advanced topics like cloud infrastructure, automation, microservices, container orchestration, user-level and ephemeral encryption keys, compliance with laws like HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR, anomaly detection for social engineering attacks, homomorphic encryption, and differential privacy.
These projects will serve as the forcing function to learn the state-of-the-art practices in security engineering, advanced security analytics and data privacy. After completing the project, Fellows will interview and get offers for full-time roles at top security teams across the industry. Insight Security Fellows will have the opportunity to meet mentors from and be considered for roles at top security companies, including: LinkedIn, Stripe, Dropbox, Mozilla, Square, ProtonMail, Vectra, and many others.
The cohort will be made up of a diverse set of Fellows from a wide variety of backgrounds. The most effective security professionals have a personal drive to secure the internet and protect the privacy of users. They have a passion for understanding systems, thinking about failure modes, and building novel solutions to close vulnerabilities. While many Fellows will come from previous roles as systems engineers, IT professionals, software engineers, and data analysts, there are many paths to Insight. There is no educational requirement, and we’re excited to consider any creative applicant with a passion for security and data privacy, regardless of their background.
Like all Insight Fellowships, this 7-week program is provided completely tuition-free for participants through support from partnering companies. Participating Fellows will meet dozens of teams from industry, leading directly to interviews with top teams. Additionally, all Fellows will have access to full-time office space, cloud computing resources, as well as need-based scholarships and financial loans to cover the cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Since 2012, Insight has helped over 2,000 Fellows transition to cutting-edge careers in specialized technical fields at more than 700 companies across the US and Canada. Starting with data science, we’ve expanded our community to data engineers, machine learning researchers and engineers, product managers, devops engineers and blockchain engineers. We’re excited to add to this diverse network by helping the next generation of professionals join the critical and exciting field of security and data privacy. Learn more about and apply now for the Insight Security Fellows Program.
The first session of the Insight Security Fellows Programs in Silicon Valley will begin on September 9th, 2019.
To learn more visit the Insight Security Fellows Program, read the white paper, and apply today to be considered for the first cohort.
