Image: Martin Lukas Kim — Server room in the new BND IT center
The battles of the future will take place primarily in virtual space. The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is massively expanding its cyber security department and is looking for young hacker talent. But what if the employer is an intelligence service? Five young agents tell their stories.
The BND wants to talk. Not just about cyber security, but above all about how difficult it is now to find good mathematicians and IT people. So he invited UNIGLOBALE to him, to Berlin-Lichterfelde, to a visitor center behind high red brick walls, surrounded by cameras.
Here there are spies sitting at a conference table, most of them relatively new. You can tell that they take their job seriously: they look remarkably inconspicuous. One person looks like the stiff math student from the library in his inconspicuous shirt, an agent could just as easily be the lecturer who reminds you of the essay deadline, and the next could be the sports scientist with whom you shared your last apartment -Party drank one beer too many. They call themselves Lina, Christina, Fabian, Sascha and André - names that, like their backstories, have to be accepted. Nevertheless, they want to talk – as openly as possible – about their path to the BND. They are framed at the conference table by seniors from various departments: Human Resources, Internal Security, Cyber Security and Technical Reconnaissance (TA).
With IT against organized crime and hacker attacks
The fact that the BND, normally a very closed-minded organization, has opened up so much is mainly due to three letters and a lot of money. SIT – the “Strategic Technology Initiative” is intended to make the BND fit for the 21st century. The resources that the federal government has invested in bringing its foreign intelligence service into shape are enormous: almost a billion euros for material resources and personnel. In concrete terms, this means that hundreds of new positions will be filled by 2020 as part of the initiative. The new agents have the opportunity to be Germany's eyes and ears abroad: whether it is about drug smuggling, international terrorism or future attacks on Germany's cyber security - in the best case scenario, they will clarify the activities using technical means so that they can be investigated if necessary can be prevented.
Back to the table in the visitor center: Sascha is 25 years old, studied business informatics and explains why it ended up becoming the BND. He lists which authorities would have been suitable for him - and why: Bundeswehr - Sport and Action. Federal Criminal Police Office – solving exciting cases. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – insights into the lives of German extremists that you wouldn’t get otherwise.
The BND is recruiting the same graduates as Google and Apple
The fact that it was the BND with its opportunities abroad and the highest budget was also due to the lists on which IT graduates choose the top employers in the industry. Giant international corporations like Google and Apple are unassailable in the top spots. A little further back, but still in 14th place and the first authority: the BND. Once you make it, the allowances and salary are quite competitive - after all, you get an IT and security allowance as well as the chance of becoming a civil servant.
But when you applied, you realized that you were applying for an intelligence service, says André. He had to spread out his whole life. Finally, the SÜG, the security clearance law, applies. BND applicants are checked at the highest level. Every trip abroad and every contact with international colleagues must be listed. This posed several problems for André, a doctor of physics: “I first had to use photos from my youth to reconstruct exactly where I was back then and when,” he says. And his university career also meant work: he, who was often at scientific conferences abroad and worked a lot with international colleagues, had to do it all. When it turned out that a colleague of his was from Russia, he was supposed to find out exactly where she was born so that the BND could find out more about her. “That was my first James Bond test,” says Sascha. He solved it brilliantly: after university he met her for a beer, eventually found out - and ended up in the IT department of the BND.
When the cell phone has no place at work
You won't find international teams that you know from Silicon Valley and the start-up scene at the BND in Berlin or Pullach near Munich: German citizenship is necessary to work for the federal authority. “I certainly trust another citizen less at first,” says the security guard employee, who is also sitting at the table in the visitor center. However, the junior agents mention a point that is initially surprising: the work-life balance at the BND is good. There's a pretty simple reason for that, says Sascha. “You are not allowed to take your work home with you.” Even at work there is less distraction than with Google & Co. You hand over your smartphone and can only be reached in the office in emergencies. Would you like to casually check out Facebook or book an Airbnb apartment on your work computer? Inconceivably. Digital detox in the federal agency.
This is also intended to prevent security gaps from occurring within the intelligence service. At the same time, as is customary in the industry, the BND has its own department that checks the security of its own IT infrastructure. While the “red team” tries to break into the system and leave behind malware, the “blue team” is supposed to prevent exactly that. The whole thing is similar to a big game of cops and robbers, they joke at the conference table. And this is where the head of the cyber security department gets involved. Because the skills of these two teams combined make the ideal BND IT person: “Someone in our team needs a bit of both: thinking like a hacker, but still preferring to be the gendarme,” he says.
Targeted against hackers instead of mass against citizens
The question is who is now being hunted: “We are primarily looking at the big boys,” says the cyber expert, by which he meant state and non-state hacker groups from abroad. Mass surveillance of the German population is definitely not the task of the BND: “We are the foreign intelligence service. The average German is not relevant to us at all.” The technical intelligence expert describes it with an image: While other intelligence services use methods that can be compared to a dragnet, the BND is obliged by law to use a harpoon to hunt for hackers. to go hunting.
Other issues are now coming to the fore at the conference table: the Snowden affair, a general distrust of the intelligence services; Topics that are hotly debated, especially among young, internet-savvy people in Germany. Of course it's exciting when such conversations take place among friends, says Christina. She is in her early 30s and has been with the BND for almost four years. In such conversations you sometimes have to bite your tongue because you can't talk to your friends at eye level, she agrees with her BND colleagues. In the end, she herself is proud of working for the BND: “This is the place where we have a lot of knowledge and a lot of responsibility.” Then she adds with a smile: “Of course we always try to do good with it .”
You can find everything about careers at the BND here .
The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is looking for young hacker talent.
