The media influences people’s understanding of cybersecurity in a couple of different ways. First, I think they make it look more glamorous and exciting than it is. There are a lot of boring, repetitive things involved with cybersecurity that are not represented in the media at all. They also make it look easier than it is. They make hacking look super quick and easy. Sometimes they make finding cybersecurity issues just as easy. Often, the media makes it look like hacking can happen in seconds or minutes. In reality, there is much more time and effort involved when trying to hack into a system or discover a cybersecurity breach. It is not usually quite so rapid and simple. The media also makes all the hackers type really fast with no errors which is pretty unrealistic. Additionally, they often use fake devices or technology which don’t actually exist to do hacking activities. They may use inappropriate or fake terms when describing things. They do all of these things to make hacking and cybersecurity look easy, glamorous, and exciting and work with their script. Some things in the media are more realistic, but they are so tied in with the unrealistic parts that it is hard to know what is based in reality and what is made up. Overall, I think media makes hacking look thrilling yet straightforward and almost impossible to stop.