On the people side of project management, the assistance of a staffing agency can quickly help you meet project deadlines. Here’s a why a staffing agency will help you complete projects on time.

Quickly Augment your Team

How companies view and utilize a contingent workforce is quickly changing. Temporary workers have always been a contributing factor to many companies’ growth, especially with seasonality spikes or one-off projects. But now, contingent work is a vital component of a company’s’ talent. According to Mercer, 93% of businesses are considering making structural workforce changes within two years.

When considering permanent placement versus short- and long-term contract workers, first review your company’s goals, and think about what work is needed to achieve them. What type of talent — full-time employees, part-time employees, or contingent workers — is best suited for each task?

Recruiting a contingent workforce is a specialized area and is highly advisable to only work with experienced recruiting agencies that specialize in short- or long- term contract work in the technical professions you need. A staffing agency will also have a database of qualified applicants to help your company quickly find the candidates with the skill set your project demands.

A recruiting agency can work with you to create a consistent and compliant contingent workforce process and eliminate employment risks to the organization.

Finding Specialized Skills

Often new business initiatives such as migrating to cloud services, implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system, or setting up new production lines with robotic equipment calls for the role of a specialist.

These specialized engineers and implementation managers are very much like the superhero that flies in to save the day and then flies back out. Their skills are highly specialized and extremely valued – and incredibly difficult to find.

Working with a staffing agency is the only realistic way to quickly find a specialized program manager, especially for project or contract work. A staffing agency is already connected to these professionals and they know the motivators that get them to sign onto projects.

Moving Forward

As your company starts planning for its upcoming projects, reach out to OSI to consult on the best workforce solution for your project. Whether it be permanent, short- or long-term contract work or anything in between, Open Systems will streamline the hiring process, allowing your company to work on its growth. Give us a call today.

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IT security teams include a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) and other senior and junior level IT security professionals. Furthermore, when building your IT security team, it is essential to think about assembling a group of professionals who have diverse experience in all areas of IT security.

Skills Your New IT Security Team Should Bring to the Table   

IT Security is a broad discipline with multiple and varied components that complement each other. While there are many unique and niche IT security skills out there, a company can build a successful IT security team with a core group of primary IT security skills.

Just the Basics: The Core IT Security Skills

Security Architecture

Security architecture is one of the foundations of a good IT security program. A security architect must know how enterprise networks are built and function. They must be able to design security controls and gateways to protect sensitive data. A good security architect should also know a wide array of security tools and how to use them effectively.

Vulnerability Management

With most network breaches stemming from unpatched systems, having someone in charge of managing vulnerabilities and patching strategies is essential. A good vulnerability manager will have expert level knowledge about vulnerabilities as well as strong business risk acumen. They will know that not all vulnerabilities are equal and will be able to define a risk-based approach to remediation that considers the business impact.

Security Operations: The CISO and Security Operations Personnel 

Security operations is a critical component of any IT security program. A CISO must know what is going on in their networks. They must also be able to identify abnormal behavior that may be indicative of an intruder. Security operations personnel should know the signs of an attack. They should also be able to develop alerting and response procedures to counteract this activity. Security operations professionals should also have a basic incident response capability such as log collection and correlation and basic forensics analysis.

Nice to Haves: Penetration Testing and Incident Response

While essential to an IT security program, penetration testing and incident response are areas that don’t need to be in-house. While the first three critical components (security architecture, vulnerability management, and security operations) are full-time, year-round operations, penetration testing and incident response are typically point-in-time activities that (hopefully) don’t take place more than a few times a year.

Moving Forward

IT security is an integral part of running a business today. By building a well-rounded IT security team, you can enhance your current security posture and prevent future incidents.

In today’s environment, it can be very difficult to hire IT security professionals as they are in high demand. In the IT security world, there is negative unemployment with more jobs available than there are IT security professionals to fill them. It is projected that in 2019 there will be 1.5 million IT security job openings. Given this challenging hiring market, it’s best to consult a professional recruiter. At Open Systems, we are experts in the recruitment of IT security professionals. Contact us today to learn more!

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