Why am I interested in Cybersecurity?

I am interested in the field of Cybersecurity mostly for personal reasons. While the job prospects, ability to work remotely, and the pay are nice perks of the field, I am mostly interested in protecting myself. In this day and age where almost everything about us is stored on tons of random servers, from banking information to social media to medical records and portals, virtually all of our lives most vulnerable data is in the hands of large corporations who do not care about me or it. It seems every month or so these days that there is a large data leak exposing millions of people to hackers, scammers, etc. One of the most troubling in recent memory being the Equifax data breach from 2017, effecting 147 million people, that ended with Equifax paying $425 million in damages. Another that happened just 2 January 2024 was the Victorian Court System in Australia, which was hacked and gave access to a multitude of recordings from hearings. As well as the Norton Healthcare data breach from December 11 2023 that was believed to affect 2.5 million people, patients and employees. This breach carried about by threat actors obtained personal info from medical records to personally identifiable information such as social security numbers and addresses. To make matters worse for this breach in particular, the breach happened in May 2023 and was not brought to light until December 2023, at the hands of the attorney general of Maine.

Unfortunately, to the average person, protecting your data in the digital age is a very difficult task for the average individual. Aside from the basics of complex passwords and multi factor authentication, the world of cyber hackers can make you feel defenseless. That’s why my goal is to gain a better understanding of cybersecurity concepts as a whole, to not only protect myself and my sensitive information, but to hopefully put into practice in the work force to help protect other vulnerable individuals as well.

Citations

Drapkin, Aaron. “Data Breaches That Have Happened in 2024 so far”. tech.co, January 2, 2024 URL.

“Equifax Data Breach Settlement.” FTC.gov, December 2022, URL.