EXPO: The Importance of Cybersecurity by Ezekiel SharpMcCumbers

Introduction:

Cybersecurity’s role in our everyday life is more important than most people realize. Malicious cyber activity threatens the public’s safety and our national and economic security. For example, Equifax, one of the largest credit bureaus in the US, said on Sept. 7, 2017, that an application vulnerability in one of their websites led to a data breach that exposed about 147.9 million consumers.

Defending Cyberspace:

Cybercriminals require cyber cops. The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber attacks and intrusions. However, we can help to protect ourselves from Cyberattacks by making stronger passwords update default passwords on IoT devices, enabling firewalls in your home routers, and so on.

Strong security on your home router is only one of the few steps in Cybersecurity that allows us to access the internet and the Cyberworld. Cybersecurity is an ever-increasing need in our everyday life. Even the most minor security measures go unnoticed daily as we log in with our passwords that are encrypted and stored safely to communicate by email and even log in to online classes to further our education.

Stay Secure:

Change the default passwords that come with any IoT device
Use alphanumeric passphrases with special characters for stronger passwords and better security

Conclusions:

Cybersecurity problems usually start with a lack of knowledge on the subject, and people themselves are primarily at fault for breaches of data stolen passwords or accounts getting hacked into. People think hackers are some kind of super genius, and some of them are but, tricking someone to open an infected link or hand their password over is much easier than brute-forcing it.

Educating more people on Cybersecurity would reduce the number of security breaches, theft of information, and loss of digital belongings or assets that happen daily.