Reformatted experts are mediocre at best, otherwise inept.
Two forces conspire to saturate any given field with drive-thru pretenders who hasten to recast their past experience and dubious credentials as just the particular expertise your dilemma demands. Those forces are commoditization and desperation. Like most fields, security is as vulnerable to these reformatted experts as any other endeavor that pays.
Case in Point
Take nuclear surety, for example. Before the sudden end of the Cold War, the nuclear surety field provided steady employment for specialists at Sandia National Laboratories and wherever else there was a robust market for such expertise. How did these experts react to the prospect of being made redundant as the early 1990s ushered in a so-called peace dividend? They reformatted. Many shifted gears and reformatted as experts in critical infrastructure protection.
As critical infrastructure protection lost traction and the promise of indefinite funding, what other reformatting oppportunities arose? One of them was Y2K, which offered the failed promise of years of employment in unraveling knots in anticipated computing catastrophes that never quite came to pass. Other, more promising reformatting targets, however, eventually surfaced.
Cyber security became a safe landing zone for reformatters in need of a cachet and a paycheck. Business continuity also availed for those who needed to transfer their erstwhile employment in business resumption or continuity of government into a province that showed better potential as a salary continuation plan.
Where Else
School and workplace violence proved equally popular reformatting targets for run-of-the-mill generalists, particularly for those whose trumpeted expertise extended no further than repackaging conventional wisdom. After all, this field regenerates popular interest with every school shooting or rampage killing. Practitioners eking out a modest living dispensing security platitudes can hardly pass up the chance to garner free publicity and new clients if they reformat as experts who know just how to address such threats. Never mind that their nostrums tend to be borrowed, unoriginal, and unburdened by success. If they reformat as experts and surface at an hour of need, someone, somewhere will be willing to engage them.
Insider Arena
Another field to now experience saturation by reformatted experts is insider threat defense. The cyber security crowd, in particular, finds this arena particularly attractive as a platform for selling its wares. So do vendors of security products and services who can manage to recast whatever they have to sell as uniquely tailored to addressing insider threats. Whether it is an invasive technology or a training program, reformatted, drive-thru insider threat experts lose no time promoting their wares and assuring the market that it cannot survive without them. Yesterday, they were auditors, guard force services, or computer security specialists. Today they reformat as insider threat experts.
Emerging Pattern
The pattern evident from these foregoing examples is clear. An old market fades or fails to sustain the mouths it was expected to feed indefinitely, hence desperation beginning to surface. Meanwhile, genuine experts in an emerging field begin to attract notice and to command an innovator's profit. Soon, the desperate onlookers notice. Consequently, they rush into this new, promising field, reformatting themselves as experts in an area they barely acknowledged yesterday. Now the commoditization effect takes place.
What was once unique and responsive to an under served market now becomes a commodity. Any field absorbing a great influx of entrants begins to lose its cachet. With a horde of reformatted, if dubious, "experts" crowding the market, the emerging field eventually begins to look over saturated with mediocrities. Conventional wisdom becomes the only wisdom on tap, and unoriginal reformatters soon suffocate the remaining innovators, crowding them out and shouting them down, with little regard for results attained. The market itself changes. Prices drop, as does quality. Reformatters reshape it, dumbing it down and lowering expectations.
The net result? Reformatted experts may still offer some value, to the extent that platitude and truism are often rooted in common sense. And common sense beats unbridled folly. But when the ultimate test comes and their offerings disappoint, the superficiality of their reformatting comes to the surface -- at somebody else's expense, hence this warning against instant experts of the reformatted variety.
