October is National Cyber Security Awareness month, and be aware goes way beyond simply not clicking on links from un-trusted source or having a firewall in place. In 2015, the British insurance company Lloyd’s estimated that cyber attacks cost business as much as $400 billion a year including direct damage plus post-attack disruption to the normal course of business. In addition, there have been grave concerns that there aren’t enough cyber security pros to fill the current job openings.
Test your knowledge about cyber security and see if you’re worthy of an IT pro.
Here’s a sneak peak at some of the answers:
In 2012 a tech industry leader warned that the United States faced an impending shortage of cyber security professionals and predicted a shortfall for that year. In June 2015 he updated his forecast and suggested that demand for security professionals would reach six million globally by 2019, with nearly 1.5 million new positions that would need to be filled.
Stuxnet
While no organization or state has claimed credit for creating Stuxnet, it is believed to have been created as part of a joint American-Israeli effort target and sabotage Iran’s nuclear programs. It has been reported that this type of malware could be introduced to a computer network via an infected USB flash drive. It likely caused major technician problems at Iran’s Natanz centrifuge operation in 2010 – and as many as 1,000 (roughly 10 percent) of the centrifuges may have been affected.
Operation Olympic Games
Operation Olympic Games was started in 2006 during the administration of President George W. Bush and accelerated under President Barrack Obama to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programs. Bush believed that the strategy was the only way to prevent Israel from launching a convention strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. It is one of the first known uses of offensive cyber weapons.
