A Brief History of Freelancing and New Cybersecurity Opportunities

The funny thing about freelancing - working as a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer - is that it has been around for a long time, much longer than in modern times. The term literally comes from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe writing where he talks about a paid army of ‘free lances’ back in the early eighteen hundreds.

I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them—I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment.

Despite being written in the eighteen hundreds, the term also can be used retroactively in order to refer to medieval mercenaries that would fight for a nation based on who paid them the most or simply whichever nation you choose to give your alliance to. However, as the word began to get popularity, there were more uses for the word freelancer and it began to apply to more careers that allowed for people to have some degree of agency in their choices. It could be used to refer to a politician who went into office without any form of political affiliation (which is what we call an independent) and later people who do any type of work on their own terms without any permanent or long-term commitment.

That last definition is definitely what applies to the modern freelancer, and the modern freelancer has greatly affected the modern landscape of cybersecurity. According to Time Magazine - at least in the United States - there was a great increase in freelancers, and the need for freelancers in the United States government went up after the 9/11 terror attacks.

As Bureau budgets surged in service to the War on Terror, the FBI, instead of hiring sufficient numbers of agents and staff who had relevant experience and lingual and cultural knowledge, turned time and again to CHSs, farming out difficult and dangerous work to freelancers like Billy Reilly.—Brett Forrest, Time, 7 June 2023

On top of all of that, the Internet and other technologies of the digital age emerged and opened up a whole bunch of great freelance opportunities while expanding all of the markets that were available to freelancers. Countries like India, for example, saw a boost in freelance work locally and freelancers who could do remote work for foreign companies while bringing in more money for the nation. Online crowdsourcing even grew into a variety of different industries and a bunch of different marketplaces that exist in the modern world.

How has this affected the field of cybersecurity? It has allowed certain companies to hire cybersecurity experts on a job-by-job basis without needing to guarantee long-term employment and it also allows said companies to potentially hire people at more affordable rates. Larger companies might have an easy time hiring a cybersecurity team at market rates or above, but a smaller online business might have a harder time affording such a thing. This has also led to the creation of new job positions, like the freelance cybersecurity analyst job that is now a possibility.