Page 10 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for North Dakota

what is cybersecurity?
Keeping Retailers in Business
One of the biggest leaks of 2020 involved cosmetic giant Estée Lauder. The multinational retailer exposed 440 million records to anyone with an internet connection, thanks to inad- equate password protection. Once it discovered the problem, the company moved quickly to secure the data. While no consumer payment information was leaked, email addresses, IP addresses, and middleware logs were all accessible, making the system vulnerable to malware. The fallout could have been much worse, considering that retailers are common targets for hackers seeking to steal credit card and email information—a hacker with more knowledge of Estée Lauder’s system could very well have done more damage.
Maintaining Medical Confidentiality
Details about your health are just between you and your doctor—and the databases holding your personal medical file. In the past, healthcare professionals wrote down your vitals and other sensitive information and filed the notes in a physical folder that was kept from prying eyes. Now, a nurse or doctor types this informa- tion into a digital file that gets stored in an electronic database. This makes sharing
information between experts
easier so that you can get
care more quickly. But
with the benefits of
accessible data
come the threats:
HIPAA Journal tallied
3,705 breaches of data-
bases holding 500 or more
healthcare records between
2009 and 2020, leading to the loss, theft, or exposure of more than 268 million records—the equivalent of 82 percent of the population of the U.S.
Coding Cyber Weapons
Tech-savvy countries are creating increasingly sophisticated tools for conduct- ing online sabotage. The theory behind these weapons is that an enemy’s capa- bilities can be destroyed without the need to use military force. While this may sound like an improvement, cyber war is no less threatening to world peace and freedom than any other kind. For instance, after Iran downed a U.S. surveil- lance drone flying over the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Cyber Command retali- ated by launching a cyberattack on the Iranian computer systems that control rocket and missile launches. There were no deaths, and the strike was deemed “very” effective. But two weeks later, Cyber Command issued a warning that an Iranian-led hack was targeting millions of American Microsoft Outlook systems. Because cyber weapons are within the reach of many “bad actors,” the mission to maintain a strong defense is one of the most demanding—and exciting—for cybersecurity professionals.
10 START-ENGINEERING.COM SOURCES: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, ACCENTURE, DELOITTE, REUTERS, FORTUNE, FORBES, WIRED, CNN, NPR, BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL,