TechTheDay

If you are considering a future career in IT, you may want to think about being a cybersecurity expert. Cybersecurity has definitely become worse in the past year. This is just after the Vault 7 reveal hackers have launched attack after attack against governments and companies, with varying motives. Companies that are reported to have been breached usually lose investors, making everyone wary about reporting such incidents to the authorities. Because of this, they are willing to spend thousands up to billions of dollars to keep their data safe. Cybersecurity professionals are definitely going to be paid handsomely in the coming years.

It’s Getting Worse

2017 was the year where everything for the “always online” generation went downhill fast. First, there was CIA’s arsenal of Zero Day exploits and hacking tools getting leaked for everyone to use. That resulted in the emergence of the Wanancry ransomware, followed by a malware similar to GoldenEye that targeted Ukraine and large parts of Europe. Lots of news of cybersecurity breaches and discoveries came afterwards. The biggest piece of news as of this article’s writing is that Intel and AMD processor chips have built-in security flaws and while AMD can easily patch their problems without worries, Intel’s hotfix can possibly cripple your PC’s computing power by as much as 30%. Worse, it is a hotfix, meaning that it is a temporary solution. Those who found out about the security flaws predict that this will take Intel years to fix.

Now, this doesn’t just affect the ordinary users. It affects everyone, especially major corporations and governments. And to the people running those corporations and governments, being this vulnerable is unacceptable after pouring millions into cybersecurity annually. So they do the only thing they can do about it: spend more.

An Expensive Game of Cops And Robbers

In December of 2015, Forbes released an article stating that the market for Cybersecurity has reached up to $75 billion that year and is projected to reach up to $170 billion by 2020. Just two years later the company, Cybersecurity Ventures, predicts that the market will grow more than that and expects it to surpass $1 trillion by 2021. The cited reason why it ballooned that much is that the market for cybersecurity is driven by incidents of cybercrime. And because of 2017’s series of cybercrimes, companies are more afraid of cybersecurity breaches than they were before.

Hence these companies are projected to start spending more on security. Both software, hardware, and people with the right specialization will be needed, and companies will pay good money to have them. The aim is to be able to prevent or respond effectively to any cyber attack and if an attack does succeed to breach these companies’ defenses, identify the weak spots in the current security system and find a solution, as well as coordinate with the authorities to identify the attackers so the authorities can apprehend them.

Of course, if your company resides in the US and found out that the attack was done from the outside, like North Korea or Russia, the chase practically end there, even if you have evidence that the attack was definitely from those countries. It is one thing to find and chase after small-time crooks who are looking to make a quick buck. It is a totally different dance if the attack is funded by a state.

Conclusion

That doesn’t mean that trying to identify the enemy is a complete waste of time. Knowing who, how, and why they attacked is very important to set up plans to prevent the next attack. And this is going to be the responsibility of anyone aspiring to work as a cybersecurity expert. If Cybersecurity Ventures’ prediction comes true, being a professional in this field might be the next most profitable profession ever and anyone that wants to get a well-paid IT career should consider this line of work.