Computer security
Today computer security is a major concern worldwide as hackings and cyber-attacks are significant threats to all businesses and users. Unfortunately most Information Technology (IT) workers are not trained to recognize and prevent these attacks. According to the industry report, there were over 4 million cyber-attacks in 2013 and it will increase in the coming year. Some of them come from certain governments who spy on others, but many come from organized crimes and individual hackers who like to steal information from users.
Regardless where the hacking comes from, most IT workers do not have the security skills to recognize their vulnerabilities before it is too late. That is why computer security skills are needed and should be taught in every IT programs. Today computer security and big data skills have the highest demand and often are the highest paying jobs but few students know that. An executive explains: “Students do not pay attention about industry needs; they routinely go to school and learn whatever the school teaches them without knowing that they must develop a specialty. Most schools only teach general skills such as programming or testing so students do not have the special skills that the industry needs. If I want to hire computer programmers, I have several thousand people to choose but if I want to hire security specialists, I may have only a few to select. If I do not offer them a very good salary, somebody will as there are only few of them. All over the world there are millions of programmers who are looking for work but only several thousand security specialists. Since my company depends on IT, I cannot afford to have hackers get in steal information and disrupt my business so I am willing to pay the highest salary possible to get security specialists.”
Due to this high demand, recently few universities have begun offering training in computer security and some companies are developing their own training programs for their workers. All IT workers must at least understand the basics of IT security such as perimeter defense, user access authentication the nature of threats and the tools hackers often use. They need to know enough to recognize a wide variety of security problems and understand when to call in specialized expertise. It is important to recognize any warning signs to prevent the attack such as suspicious patterns. As cyber-attacks and hacking threats continues to grow worldwide, every company will need security expertise to counter these threats and safeguard information now and into the future.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
