Cyber-engineering is quite similar to cybersecurity, though cyber-engineering involves working with the physical hardware and creating software whereas cybersecurity focuses on data infrastructures. Cyber-security engineering majors need to learn fundamental mathematics and coding. Cybersecurity commonly overlaps with criminal justice because much of the curriculum concerns cyber law and recognizing types of cybercrime. Cybersecurity commonly pairs with many professions within law-enforcement and criminal justice systems, like digital forensics, crime scene investigations, and technical analysts.
What would you consider the most important cybersecurity agency in the United States? FBI? CIA? DHS? Well, the truth is, that they all work together to secure cyberspace in the US and prevent attacks that would harm citizens. Do these offices sometimes go too far to ensure security measures? I’d argue “yes.” I think some agencies sweep human ethics under the rug in some respects, like the obsessive efforts of border patrol and ICE. Since 9/11, security measures have tightened so much, sometimes it feels like a chokehold.
Though I also believe that the implementation of more cybersecurity protocols have prevented thousands of would-be terrorists from attacking innocent civilians. And yet, the most dangerous terrorist threats these days are home-grown far-right anti-government groups, not anyone across the Mexican border.
The field of cybersecurity is always evolving as is technology and human development. Who knows what the world will look like in 2030? Maybe cybersecurity measures won’t be as severe as personal microchips or having your entire genome mapped out and stored, but a lot can happen in a decade. In 1999, the IBM Microdrive was invented and it could only store 170MB and 340MB. That’s what, maybe two episodes of Law & Order in 480p? Over a decade of technological progression passes and in 2009, the terabyte hard-drive is invented, a terabyte being 1000 gigabits of data. To compare, 300MB would only take up 0.0003 of 1000GB of storage. That’s less than one percent.