I have been instructed to select four majors offered by Old Dominion University and discuss how these four majors relate to cyber security. The majors I have selected are computer engineering, criminal justice, sociology, and web programming. I will be going over in depth on how exactly these specific programs do this in each program’s individual section.

                I would now like to begin with computer engineering. Computer engineering is a kind of engineering that integrates computer science and electronic hardware. When developing the hardware of a computer, one is required to incorporate a bios, which is stored in flash memory located on the motherboard. The bios is firmware that completes a wide range of tasks such as, the boot process, and general data flow from software to hardware and vice versa. This is where cyber security comes in. This data is susceptible to interception just like all. So, it is important for computer engineers to keep this in mind when developing computer hardware.

                For my second major I have choses criminal justice. This is a no brainer. Cyber-crime has become somewhat of an epidemic in society today. Therefore, the criminal justice system should be aware of cyber related crimes as they are serious and can cause a lot of financial and physical harm. For example, Target, a corporate retail store, was hacked via back door in their point of sale system. This breach exposed customer’s data and left Target with an 18.5-million-dollar settlement to pay.  

                My third choice is abstractly related to cyber security. This major is sociology. Simply put, sociology is the study of groups of individuals and how they behave. Cyber criminals are indeed their own social group. Therefore, they can be used as a demographic to measure and understand as to why they behave in such a manner.

                For my final choice, I have chosen web programming. Web programming consist of writing html and CSS in conjunction with various scripting languages such as JavaScript to develop websites. From personal experience with programming, it is common knowledge to privatize your variables when applicable to ensure that nothing else can communicate with said variable. This helps prevent people from “hacking” your website. Also, websites that use any kind of database should utilize parameterized queries and other methods to prevent SQL injection.