Thread: Exploring if I should hire Indian pen-testers/Security pros

Originally Posted by IncludeErik

Hello, I am from the US and looking to expand a small team of pen-testers we have here Internationally. I came up in the hacking scene and respect those who learn simply for the sake of wanting to learn. I see g4h community as a great crew of .in hackers and wanted some tips from you guys on hiring webapp pen-testers from India. What job sites should I advertise on? What are the conferences to attend? (I know about Nullcon)

I want to get good security pros with 1 to 10 years experience, who can be very professional, function well in an English speaking environment, and can be a bit flexible on working late/early to attend conference calls with the US.

Any advice appreciated, and please don't send me resumes yet....I'm still trying to determine the legal and tax implications of hiring foreign workers so just seeking knowledge at the point.

Cheers

ohk so in terms of conferences we have 5-6 major conferences which you can look at.
1) Nullcon as you already, Delhi : Sep 2012 and Goa : Feb 2012 (Delhi i think they have a job fair too so you can expect job seekers there) nullcon - International Security Conference
2) ClubHack : Pune generally in Dec ClubHack
3) c0c0n : Southern india this time Trivendarum : Aug 2012 cOcOn - International Cyber Security and Policing Conference
4) Malcon : Mumbai : MalCon – International Malware Conference | Next generation malware research
5) Security Byte : Banglore : Securitybyte Conference 2011 - India's Largest Information Security Conference

regarding job forums jobs.nullcon.net is one such forum where large amount of folks to keep a tab on security realted posting.

Disclaimer : I am associated with null as one of its core member.

Hope this can help.

Anant has summed it very well.
From what I understand from your post,I think you are looking for offshore resources and lately there has been a increase in people entering into Information Security Research and Consulting in India, thanks to Null and other security groups there's lot of awareness and we have some serious quality people.

Lot of security research & consulting companies have started their operations out of India, because of the quality manpower,English speaking population and advantage of timezone differences.

Great info gents! What about cities, are there any cities that have a higher concentration of hacker pros or are all the big cities well represented? In the US San Fran, NYC, Austin and Boston have the most/best hackers. It is much harder to find good folks in other cities.

Originally Posted by IncludeErik

Great info gents! What about cities, are there any cities that have a higher concentration of hacker pros or are all the big cities well represented? In the US San Fran, NYC, Austin and Boston have the most/best hackers. It is much harder to find good folks in other cities.

I think Banaglore, Pune and Mumbai have the most hacker density.. but that is just a rough estimate. There is potenial all around India. Good thing would be if you organize recrutiment process in a central location and invite people for selection process via an announcement on web/newspaper.

What about salaries? I noticed none of the jobs that i looked at here Vulnerability Assessment / Penetration Testing post any salary info. Does anybody have a site that shows salary rates? I'd want to pay above average as I'm looking for very skilled professionals, but I don't even know what average is in the Indian InfoSec market.

@IncludeErik, from the way I see, Indian security professional are earning more than what a developer or other people in computer industry is earning. Mainly they get paid by there skills and there involvement and activity in the security industry. I would say the average salary of a skilled Indian security professional with 1-2 years experience is 16000 USD /Annum .

Great thanks fb1h2s, this helps out a lot. I can do some calculations now to determine if I can hire and how many folks. I would only want the best of the best so I'd be willing to pay better than average for very skilled people. This gives me an idea of what that would cost.

Cheers mate!

For having 6 years of experience I get paid less than 16,000 USD per annum.
I believe Rahul was quoting something that he gets ;-)

Money would also depend on the city that person comes from due to the cost of living.
Mumbai, Gurgaon etc. would have higher salaries when compared to Hyderabad for the same position.

M4te do u want to make y4ur S3curity Company or You wanna make a t3am of H@CK3RS