Difference between IWengineer and IWOfficer

[moldysack]

Greetings all,

I would like to know the difference between and Information warfare officer and and information warfare engineer. I am applying to be a Navy officer and have narrowed in down to theses two career fields. I am previous Air force and have experience in Cyber security through them and the civilian world. I also have my CE|H certification, A+ certification and Security + certifications all current as well as an active clearance. I am looking for a position that would do Penetration Testing, defend against network attacks or possibly something around the area of packet analysis and incident response/Forensics. Are either of these applicable?

[arvizo]

It is possible to do what you desire as either a Cyber Warfare Engineer or an Information Warfare Officer, but there are some key distinctions to be aware of. All CWE billets are focused on cyber. IW is much more broad, so it has cyber billets, but also many non-cyber billets. CWE is not a full career path. After five years or so you would have to redesignate to something else. IW is a full career path with officers currently up to the O-10 level.

[CNO Guy]

Sorry for the late reply, haven't been on this particular forum in quite some time.

To further clarify Arvizo's comment above:

CWE = cyber developers, so think of programming and software development
IWO = SIGINT, EW, and Cyber with an operational focus

So yes, either could do what you are asking, but more likely IWO rather than CWE. Another community to consider would be IP.

The IWO(1810) and CWE(1840) Information Sheets can be found at the following link under "Career Info", let me know if you have further questions:
http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/o ... fault.aspx