The idea of getting your identity stolen orlosing valuable personal information online is a relatively new threat that hastaken the world by storm. It almost seems like no matter what you do to try toprotect yourself, you are always at some level of risk. Especially as much ofour personal data, including health care and banking information, isn’t solelywithin our control, some of the power lies with the entities that we must sharethis info with.
Fortunately, there are people out there thatcan help make a positive difference in the protection of our data. Even withinthe financial sector — where new technologies are pushing the limits of ourknowledge — there are specific cybersecurity professionals that are workingtowards keeping our transactions as safe as possible. These people areessential to the success of any organization that is working in the digitalworld.
The value of cybersecurity professionals in the financial — and every other — sector of the economy makes them a hot commodity. With a background in cybersecurity, one could literally write their ticket anywhere that they wanted to go and be successful in doing so. The biggest struggle facing us today is keeping the supply of people qualified for these jobs high enough to meet the demand.
AnImmense Need
It may come as somewhat of a surprise, but cybersecurity is a sector of the job market that is grossly understaffed and desperate to find qualified professionals to take jobs. One study indicates that nearly 3.5 million cybersecurity-related jobs will be left unfilled within the next couple of years. Whether or not people are just unaware of this immense need or some other factor prevents them from pursuing these careers is unclear.
Many professionals are working to expose youngadults to the opportunities that could exist for them if they were to pursue a career in cybersecurity. Theyencourage parents to nurture their kids’ interest in technology from a youngage and to promote them studying things like coding, IT, the cloud, and othermodern technological tools as soon as they are old enough to grasp theconcepts.
The fact of the matter is that cybersecurity is critically important to nearly any business and organization out there today. Someone with the necessary background could work in a hospital setting, a federal organization, or the financial sector with ease. In reality, this skill could enable them to live wherever they want and put their energies into helping organizations they are most interested in.
Plentyof Options
Perhaps one of the biggest difficulties forpeople to understand prior to getting into the field is just how much diversitythere actually is when it comes to cybersecurity. Much like how the broad term“healthcare” doesn’t really adequately describe all of the intricate careerswithin the field, “cybersecurity” just barely scratches the surface of what onecould specialize in. There are actually a bunch of different cybersecurity specializationssuch as automotive security engineering, cloud security, and penetrationtesting.
One example of a career in cybersecurity isvulnerability analysis. As a vulnerability analyst, you would work to find weaknesses in networks and softwarethen design solutions to beef up the security system. You’d basically begetting paid to find ways to hack the system, then fixing it. The career couldbe in-house for a larger company, or by contract, meaning you could work on alot of different systems over time.
Of course, this is just one example. There aremany that would be highly relevant to the fintech industries that are workingdaily with individual and corporation finances. Hiring someone like avulnerability analyst would allow you to enhance your cybersecurity infrastructure.Building a strong team of cyber professionals is your best bet at fullyprotecting your company.
KeepingUp with Tech Advances
Becoming a cybersecurity expert would alsomean taking steps to keep up with the latest technologies of the day. Given howquickly everything is advancing and new ideas are becoming mainstream, this inand of itself could be a real challenge. In the financial sector, take theadvances of cryptocurrency and its use of blockchain technology.
Blockchain technology is a way to passinformation through transactions with a very low risk of hacking. The data isverified through multiple databases, and each transaction gets its own block,meaning that in order to steal information one would either have to have thepersonal key of the owner or change all the blocks at once from multipledatabases. This can make it particularly difficult to steal information,but not completely impossible.
There are a lot of really cool ways that blockchain technology is currently being usedto protect personal data in all sorts of sectors of our economy. Aspreviously mentioned, it is popular with cryptocurrencies, but it is alsobeginning to be used by major banks to help better protect transactions. It isalso being used widely within the healthcare system and the state and federalgovernments to protect personal data and important information from hackers andthose that would use it to do wrong.
The field of cybersecurity is vast and full ofthousands of opportunities for those interested. There are literally millionsof job openings within the U.S. alone, which means that anyone with an interestand enough skill would be able to work just about wherever they wanted. Newtechnologies are constantly keeping the job interesting and professionals ontheir toes.
