Page 44 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for UT Austin

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What do video game publisher
Electronic Arts, online career
networking service LinkedIn,
and Reverb, a web-based marketplace
for music gear, have in common? They’re
recent victims of cyberattacks. Black-
hat hackers are routinely targeting all
kinds of businesses — from retailers to
power companies — as well as govern-
ment agencies, school districts, hospi-
tals and … well, pretty much any kind of
entity you can name with an online pres-
ence. Cyberattacks have “gone from
a novelty to a form of
destruction,” says Jon
Brickey, a senior VP at
Mastercard. “It’s a ma-
jor risk factor to every
enterprise.” Accord-
ingly, there’s a huge
need for cybersecurity
experts, who devise
ways to protect propri-
etary information and
keep hackers at bay.
For career-minded
young people, it’s a
field jam-packed with
high-paying jobs and
too few candidates to
fill them.
The work is always
challenging because
hackers are innovative criminals. Most
companies and organizations collect
and store the personally identifiable
information, or PII, of millions of clients
and customers. Criminal gangs or for-
eign adversaries target PII for ill-gotten
gains. Sometimes they’ll encrypt data,
lock it up, and demand a ransom to free
it. Or they’ll use people’s personal infor-
mation for fraudulent purposes, which
is called identity theft. But they’re not
always aiming for PII. Many businesses
have trade secrets they want to keep
from competitors —
which makes them
tempting targets, too.
For instance, the hack-
ers that hit Electronic
Arts stole source code
used in its most popu-
lar games. Meanwhile,
devices are increasingly
becoming connected to
each other via the In-
ternet of Things. That
makes life easier for
consumers — “Hey,
Alexa, play Dua Lipa!”
— but it creates even
more targets.
The upshot? Jobs in
cybersecurity are avail-
able in every industry
America’s top companies pay top dollar for cyber sleuths.
Jobs Available
Everywhere!
BIG BUSINESS SOURCE: COMPARITECH.COM
and government agency. Private-sector
companies tend to pay higher salaries
than public-sector agencies, even to
entry-level employees. But the skills
and experience cybersecurity pros ac-
quire in either private or public sector
jobs are similar, so moving from govern-
ment to the corporate world or vice
versa is always an option. Unfortunately,
there will always be nefarious hackers
out in the ether, devising new ways to
attack. So the need for cybersecurity
experts, Brickey says, “is here to stay.”
Big Business
1. Las Vegas Sands
2. Booz Allen Hamilton
3. Lockheed Martin
4. NBC Universal
5. Chevron
6. Bank of America
7. Accenture
8. SAIC
9. J.P. Morgan
10. General Motors
11. Northrop Grumman
12. Leidos
Top U.S. companies hiring
cyber professionals
careers: Companies of All Kinds