Hacking becomes a legitimate subject as businesses seek cyber skills

[Reefa]

As businesses seek cyber skills, hacking becomes a legitimate subject at Switzerland’s ETH University in Zurich. To prevent computer malfeasance, students learn how to infiltrate Internet and Mobile networks in different classes like “modern malware” and “wireless electronic warfare”. With demand for cybersecurity graduates being the way it is, the University says that the number of students doing master’s degree on hacking tripled since 2009.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, cybersecurity has grown into a $70 billion business over the past few years, while fears over hacking have been heightened by reports of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency and eavesdropping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

Demand of cyber specialists is rising as big companies (like Deutsche Telekom) are hiring more experts to counter risks to their networks andproducts.

“The NSA affair was a wake-up call, but companies also became aware that there’s a lot more cyber criminality,” Juergen Kohr, head of cybersecurity at Germany’s biggest phone company Deutsche Telekom, said in an interview. Last year it suddenly became more competitive to recruit the right people, he said. “It’s a very, very embattled market.”

Kickstarter, the fundraising platform used by millions of people to raise capital for creative projects and businesses, said on Saturday that hackers had gained access to some of its customers’ data earlier this week but that the breach had been repaired.

A day before that, Forbes was hacked, its Twitter accounts were hijacked, more than a million user details were stolen by the Syrian Electronic Army. And that just what happened during the last two DAYS.

The proportion of companies reporting losses of $10 million or more as a result of cybersecurity incidents has risen 51 percent since 2011, according to a survey of 9,600 executives in 115 countries by PwC last year. About 7 percent of respondents said they had suffered such losses which leads to broader career options and opportunities for cyber specialists in the nearest future.

Source