Why 'Cyber Security' Is Becoming A Huge Deal

In the early ages of the Internet, the major problems related to its security were related to viruses that spread across the Web. About 50 years after the initial stages of the Internet development, Cyber Security has become a huge deal. We often get news about privacy breaches and, if there are ways to protect ourselves , it is also important to understand why Cyber Security is so much in vogue.

1) Our privacy level is dropping

With the recent NSA and Edward Snowden scandal , the US Government is under a lot of pressure from foreign countries due to all privacy invasions. One of such countries is Brazil, where the Government is being specially interventive with this subject and is even thinking about building some sort of "intranet", while developing its own (and supposedly safer) services.

This scandal also brought a new discussion worldwide: how safe are our contents online, regardless of the services we use or the pages we see? Consequentially, the demand for "privacy-friendly" services has also grew exponentially.

2) Hackers are becoming more active

You would think that, with all the breakthroughs and developments in computing and Internet, the big companies should secure their costumer's data in a more secure way. They are probably doing it but, at the same time, hackers are also improving their "stealth" skills. In fact, 2013 has been a year with several famous hackings , such as the recent cases involving Target and Adobe .

Such examples raised awareness on how safe the passwords we use really are (not). For example, in the 20 most popular passwords stolen from the Adobe database we found "123456", "123456789", "password", "adobe123" and "12345678" in the top 5 - which is plain ridiculous. Not only we need to improve our personal security, but companies also have to improve the way they store our information.

3) It is an ever-growing business

With all these privacy scandals and personal data thefts, a boom in the cyber security business is to be expected. More and more security companies and services are being developed, with an ever-growing demand. More and more professionals are turning to it, developing skills and new ways to improve our security online.

Now you ask: where the cyber security jobs are ? Other than the big protection companies such as Norton, Panda or Kaspersky, big computer companies such as Microsoft and Google are also wanting to learn new and better ways to protect their services. So, in case you are searching for an area to invest in, both in a personal/professional level or in terms of innovation, this is without a doubt one of the best to bet on.

What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments.