Bureau passionately touts benefits of the job

Dec 30, 2014 15:44 GMT  ·  By

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for cyber experts to upgrade its abilities in the fight against cybercrime and posted an announcement with incentives for the candidates.

Those who want to become a cyber special agent should expect not only “camaraderie and teamwork,” but also monetary compensation between $59,340 (€48,805) and $76,568 (€62,971) per year; of course, the job offer is for US citizens only.

The FBI has often collaborated with private security companies

It must be noted that private companies are willing to pay much more for talented people, and there have been plenty of cases where individuals left a job with the government either to start their own security business or to work in the private sector.

In a post published on Monday, the agency said that it was recruiting computer scientists, digital forensic examiners, and cyber-skilled interns.

During the past years, the FBI has been involved in multiple operations with private security actors, investigating incidents such as data theft, website hacks, cyber intrusions, denial-of-service attacks.

It has been part of different inquiries, including malware spread through botnets, but most of the technical work was provided by private security researchers.

Efforts from the Bureau to improve the technical aspect of its activity and rely less on third-party services has been observed for a long time. In September, it also announced Malware Investigator, an intelligence gathering platform open for the private sector that would correlate data about malware in order to trace changes in the behavior of various threat actors.

Although the job announcement was published in the news section of FBI’s website on Monday, the post has been available since December 19 and candidates are expected to apply until January 20, 2015.

Future training is ensured

“What we want are people who are going to come and be part of a team that is working different very complex types of investigations and to utilize their skillsets in that team environment,” said Robert Anderson, Jr., executive assistant director for the Bureau’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch.

He added that the cyber special agent would be included in all counter-terrorism or counter-intelligence operations, and could be the lead agent in the investigated cases.

Candidates between 23 and 37 years old are eligible for the job, which also requires some certifications; the Bureau is also interested in work experience.

Once hired, the agents will have access to future training in order to hone their skills and become better at their job.

“I do think the biggest thing you can offer to anyone that comes to work at the FBI is the mission and the scale of investigations,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t matter where you go, it doesn’t matter who you work for, you can’t get that anywhere else but the FBI,” he added.

Robert Anderson talks about FBI seeking to hire cyber experts: