Become a legal IT security expert doesn’t need a lot of effort and, with the due care, you can build your legend in a short time-frame following ten easy steps:
- learn the lingo (security is a process, not a product; don’t use simply-to-guess password, is your company ISO-27000-1 compliant? and so on),
- give yourself an “authoritative” demeanor and look (always talk in a “visionary” way, making people feel like they still live in the stone age) and dress accordingly,
- Talk legalese with techies, technical with lawyers,
- attend (possibly) international IT technical, legal/management conferences and try to get as much pictures as possible? of you with reputable people although they don’t know you, and regularly update your facebook/google+/blog with those pictures,
- try to give a speech at some university students association, so you can claim to be an “invited speaker” at the university (without mentioning the name, of course),
- create your own “digital-something organization”, become its chairman (and sole member, BTW) and champion for digital human rights,
- flood the newspapers with press-releases that will be regularly ignored until some journalist that is out of time to finish an article stumbles upon your statement, thus promoting you at the level of “source”
- try to catch-up with some low-level civil servant involved in trivial stuff related to the trade, give him some vapourware hint that makes him look smart at work, and use him as a source of petty-information that let you look like you’re part of the “inner circle”,
- try to have as much as possible Linkedin connection,
- get the European Computer Driving License (at least, you must know how to switch on a computer to work in this field, don’t you?)
By following these steps you start a loop where your legend become more and more solid up to a moment when you will be considered a “guru” and nobody will ever check your actual background.
And don’t worry, if you ever get a client, as soon as you stay stick to these ten commandments you’re safe: nobody will ever challenge the outcome (if any) of your work, because nobody will ever admit to having being fooled into hiring a fake…