Programming and IT security postions

I wanted to start a topic on what security jobs require programming and what jobs do not. I think this will help people choosing the right security path to work to. For example; penetration testing vs incident handing/response, network security engineer vs network security analyst, and IA officer vs something else?

Any input on the different skills needed to preform these or similar jobs and the proper degree paths/courses to take?

Just how important is it to learn code, besides I thought they had dedicated programmers that do code work all day?

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Comments

cleanwithit

You may get more responses in the Security part of the forum.

earweed

I don't work in security but most people will probably agree that some programming knowledge is essential in all of those areas.
One big glaring hole that would be there if security people didn't know how to code is that if programmers leave a vulnerability in their code then someone needs to find it and tell them it needs to be fixed. Also if noone but pure programmers understand the code then that is a huge security vulnerability right there. Everyone in IT should know at least a little about coding and be able to decipher what is going on.

Paul Boz

I am strong in each of the areas you listed and I can't program my way out of a paper bag. Because I'm not a programmer I often provide a unique perspective to programmers because I see what they're doing in a different way. You can understand programming concepts and get the general gist of whats going on, similar to being able to read a foreign language in text but not be able to speak it fluently.