Page 17 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for UT Austin

CYBERSECURITY CAREER GUIDE 17
Watch out for scams. Learn to
identify email scams and shady web-
sites. Knowing a bogus email when
you see one is tricky. The best ones look
really convincing, just like lots of other
emails in your inbox. Phishing hackers
are counting on people not paying close
attention to emails and just clicking or
answering without looking very hard at
what they’re doing.
Be careful what you post. All the
items you share on social media, for
example, should reflect behaviors and
language that you are willing to live with
for years to come. Sketchy photos and
dubious words from the past have come
back to bite many people when college
admissions officers and prospective
employers come into the picture. Count
on the fact that they will check your
posts, tweets, and snaps. And consider
what they will reveal about you.
Protect your privacy. As a texter or
emailer, social media user, shopper, or
just website visitor, always remember
that any personal information we pro-
vide will almost certainly go somewhere
we don’t expect it to go. Most of us have
no idea how much we tell companies
about ourselves online. Data merchants
harvest and sell data by the terabyte,
making money off our personal informa-
tion whether we like it or not. And hack-
ers scour the web for bits of personal
data like birthdays, pet names, or favor-
ite movies to try and crack our pass-
words and other login tools. Whatever
data you can keep to yourself, you
should — providing your bank with a
home address, birthdate, and phone
number might be okay, but in an online
game chat room? No way!
Speaking of banks, sensitive informa-
tion should always be encrypted. Have
you ever noticed that web addresses be-
gin with either “http” or “https”? The “s”
stands for “secure,” meaning your data
is encrypted into meaningless gibberish
as it moves from you to the machine and
back again. And only the machine has
the key to translate, or decrypt, the gib-
berish back into your personal data.
Say no to drugs. Whatever your state’s
laws say about the use of marijuana, let
alone other recreational drugs, federal
law continues to make it illegal. Many pri-
vate-sector employers follow federal law
and will disqualify potential employees
for positive drug tests. And government
security clearances require clean drug
tests over extended periods of time.
Be cautious — and thrifty. Start
monitoring your bank accounts and
credit cards so that you can spot
identity theft that can create debt in
your name. Avoid high consumer debt
of your own — you don’t want your credit
card balance to make it look like you
could be bribed for access and informa-
tion. How you spend your money will
also be visible through your credit rating
to anyone evaluating you for a possible
job. Showing irresponsibility with your
own personal finances will raise a flag
for anyone trying to decide if you should
be trusted with other people’s sensitive,
personal data and resources. Whether
using the internet now as a student or
defending it in the future as a cybersecu-
rity professional, keeping things clean
online and IRL will always be the right
approach.
Which leads us to cybersecurity
careers. Indeed, establishing trustwor-
thiness online is central to cybersecurity
professionals’ work, but so is maintain-
ing it offline. As it turns out, all these
best online security practices can set you
on a path towards a career in cybersecu-
rity. Learning how to build strong pass-
words, distinguish real emails from
phishing scams, and track how far your
data can travel beyond the website you
just gave it to can well serve as the basic
training needed to launch you towards
a career in cybersecurity. Knowing what
can go wrong with your own online life is
a great way to start thinking about how
to prevent things from going wrong with
other people’s online lives.