First blog post, so I suppose I should tell you why I chose Cybersecurity.
I originally chose just Computer Science, but as time went on and my interests changed, Cysec became more a fit for me than CS. Privacy is very important to me, and I have spent a great deal of time over the years going out of my way to protect my information on the internet. I understand that most people may not have the think the same way, so they must rely on others to keep some semblence of security around their information. This attitude can be carried over to other things, instead of someones personal information, it can be a companies inventory database, or a remote control system to water pumping stations for a municipal water supply. In short, it’s something the application of which I greatly care about. I’m not the onlt one who should care about cybersecurity, as it is an interdisciplinary field.

Here are four majors offered by ODU, and why the people involved in them relate.

First we have a graphic design major. People obtaining this degree typically are going for being a graphic artist for a company or organization, or they are freelancing. Most of, if not all of their work will be done on a computer, including their art portfolio. What if someone has something against the company they work for, and wishes to harm their profits by shutting down their rendering server for a length of time? What if a rival freelance graphic artist wants to harm them by taking over their brand account, or releasing unfinished art under their own name? They would benefit from someone in cybersecurity to ensure they and their organization are reasonably safe from it.

Second, an economics graduate could be employed by a companies cybersecurity department to assist in pricing services, budgeting hardware/software or even wages for people like themselves. Alternatively, they could be employed to keep pricing competitive in advance of what other firms are doing, as well as do risk management.

Third, a computer engineering graduate could be emplyed to design the hardware a cybersecurity department or organization needs to get an edge on their competition and do a better job.

Fourth and finaly, a data science and analytics major would be invaluable to a cysec company for their knowledge of how data is stored, and the ability to make sense of the data.

So many ways that cybersecurity ties into what we do, it’s no wonder it interests me so.