Cyber security is all around us from the minute we wake up to when we go to sleep. Most people involve themselves into the basics like setting up a strong password while others use multifactor authentication, i.e. an RSA device.

Looking through the ODU course catalog, I came across four majors have strong ties to cybersecurity in terms of daily business activities. The majors are Accounting, Database Administration, Maritime & Supply Chain Management, and Criminal Justice. These four majors are similar in ways but differ to the extent of the Framework used to compile a cybersecurity program.

Accounting departments deal with personal and professional money matters daily. A company (Accounting) that focuses their attention to the movement of money needs strong controls in place to protect the business and client’s financial information from getting to the wrong hands.

Imagine for a minute you owned a large retail store that carried large amounts of inventory. The inventory is tracked using an Oracle SQL suite or other database management software. Resources are limited in terms of the money available to cybersecurity. One day you conduct a physical inventory and notice the count is correct according to the database, but wrong according to the purchase orders. Later you find out that someone in the company has gained access to the system changed the numbers in the system and got away with a huge amount of inventory undetected. This example shows how important for each company to invest properly with regards to budget size, company size, and value of products into cybersecurity controls.

The Maritime and supply chain deal heavily with the movement of goods from one place/country to another. This industry has so many aspects of cybersecurity intertwined into the daily activities that if there was a breech in the controls; businesses could go under, people get hurt, and customer trust lost to name a few reactions.

One of America’s biggest industries is the Criminal Justice field. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics as of 2016, there were 3 million workers. These workers need access of some type and this requires a more robust cybersecurity Framework that deals with multiple other industries.

Cyber security is everyone’s responsibility!