One place that many of these jobs are available in the United States is through the government. All levels of government need to have their private information protected, especially since the risk of a terrorist attack is at an all time high and the threat of cyber terrorism is increasing as well. Your role as a security officer would be to keep all of the government organization's information and computers safe from hackers and viruses, which will, in turn, keep the people safe as well. Many law enforcement agencies also hire information technology security agents, so there is definitely no shortage of these information technology jobs available.
If you do decide to get involved with this type of career, your basic goal will be to protect all of the information that could possibly escape and fall into the wrong hands. This means that you would have to develop security policies and make sure that everyone within the organization is following these rules at all times. If you were to find a security breach at any time, you would have to immediately find a way to fix it by any means necessary. In some cases, this might lead to you conducting an internal investigation, as you will have to find out how this information was able to escape and who, if anyone, is responsible.
The reason why this is included under information technology jobs is that there is a great deal of encryption that will be necessary to protect the data that your organization is transmitting. This data will be transferred from place to place all day long, so protecting it throughout the day can be a very difficult proposition. You must also make sure that the computers are protected against viruses, as a virus could immediately damage or delete some extremely important files, which would create havoc for the company that you are working for. This damage could end up being as bad an unauthorized access, especially if you are not able to recover it once it has been deleted.
Jobs like this are one of the reasons why information technology is such an expanding field. As the world becomes more dependent on technology, these jobs will increase in numbers even further, which means that there is unlimited growth potential for this industry. Getting involved now will get you gain the experience you will need down the line and it is definitely one of the best opportunities in all of IT.
