Increased cyber attacks mean Internet security jobs on the rise

Global Business

It’s a problem that confronts individuals, companies and governments around the world daily: cyber attacks.

They’re often aimed at stealing personal information, and they can be costly and harmful to its victims.

That’s put a premium on the art of cyber defense. CCTV America’s Hendrik Sybrandy reports.

It is nothing short of war. Not the kind of hostilities that mankind has engaged in for centuries – this war is being waged over the Internet.

Dan Likarish, a computer expert at Regis University, said that with criminal cyber attacks exploding in numbers, cyber defense is more critical than ever.

On a recent Friday, eight teams of college students took part in a cyber defense competition. Each group’s goal was to protect a fictitious e-government system from hackers, keep it running, and do it better than the folks next door. Or as one of those running the event put it.

It’s a tricky thing, protecting a municipal website while citizens continue to use it. Harder still when evildoers use every trick in the book to try to penetrate it.

That was the red team’s job in this exercise. 

“Now we’re going to start with the maliciousness. They’ll attempt phishing attacks. They’ll look for easy passwords; they’ll look for systems that have known vulnerabilities. And then move in against their databases where the real crown jewels are,” Likarish said.

“We have so many different things going on at the same time that it’s hard not let things fall through the cracks. And so just staying organized to make sure we’re hitting every single task that we need to,” John Stauffer, a cyber competitor, said. 

These are some of the faces of cyber defense in the future. 

“There are a lot of problems, a lot of puzzles with it, and that’s really what I enjoy,” Stauffer said.

Likarish said there were fewer than 1 million attempted intrusions on the state of Colorado’s computers when this competition began five years ago. He said governments, utilities, and businesses are all looking for talent.

This competition was a battlefield preview for these new cyber warriors as they train to fight a digital war.