FEATURE: Cracking Cybersecurity - Smart Futures interview

Cracking

PICTURE the scene. You are the Principal of a school and you prepare to travel there after breakfast one morning but you see that the school’s Twitter account is posting strange messages.

You start to receive queries from parents and you contact the IT manager. She informs you that the website is not accessible and that she cannot access the school network through her devices.

On arrival at the school, administration staff informs you that all the screens are blue and are showing a request for payment of money. You realise you have been the target of a cyberattack and you need cyber security professional expertise to deal with it.

This is a made up scenario but shows that even a school can be a target for cybercriminals and cybercrime.

Can you explain cyber security?

Cyber security is about protecting ourselves online. The Internet with its online platforms and social media offerings empowers us to connect to share experiences, to purchase goods and services to learn and have fun. The Internet was built to be open and interoperable and those who designed it overlooked the dark side of human nature. Online fraud, scams, defacing of web content, blocking access, impersonation via account hijacking, misinformation, stealing money or your personal data or even your device’s computing power are just some of the dangers known as threats that arise in our digital world.

Cyber security therefore seeks to protect both your data and your devices, and empowers you to make informed decisions about trusting others in the online world.

Can you explain the National Cyber Security Strategy 20192024 which you oversee?

In a nutshell, the Strategy has 3 key objectives – protecting us, developing our capabilities to better manage the challenges and working together at both national level and internationally.

I’m particularly focused on skills development aspects within cyber security. Previously I had worked as an expert in the European Commission focused on building up cyber security capabilities in the Member States of the European Union.

How much more relevant or important is cybersecurity going to become in the coming years?

In line with the digitalisation of our society, as everything becomes connected and machine to machine communication via 5G telecommunications networks takes place, we need to be assured that our data is confidential, that our infrastructure works as intended and that digital services remain available.

Cyber security is about looking after what is important to us, namely our confidentiality, integrity and availability as a digital society.

As long as there’s ingenuity, inno-

Cybersecurity

James Caffrey works on implementing the National Cyber Security Strategy at the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. He explains in detail what cyber security is and the important role it’s going to play in years to come.

vation, agitation, protest, conflict and crime, and for so long as we use information communications technology, cyber security issues will be with us.

What types of jobs can people get into if cyber security appeals to them?

Historically, cyber security emerged from experience with IT security and so those with IT skillsets are well placed to avail of the opportunities arising. Those now involved in developing IT networks, systems administration and coding are now engaged in applying key cyber security principles such as network defence-in-depth and security by design computing.

For those with a computer science background, you can work as cyber security analysts and consultants in undertaking security assessments, consultancy advice provision, organisational risk management, network defence, incident response, network investigations and forensic computing.

Given that cyber security is about behaviour as much as about specialist computer science expertise, those interested in psychology, public relations and communications and crisis management can also find exciting careers.

Awareness raising of good cyber security hygiene and role playing through cyber exercises help increase our preparedness and that of our organisations to be more resilient and be better able to withstand cyber incidents.

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What type of STEM subjects should students consider if they want to get into cybersecurity?

Those with aptitudes for problem solving and mathematical reasoning will have a head start. If you like mathematics and computer science "For those with considering. Those students intera computer ested in science and behavioural science aspects can also consider the human background, dimension.Cyber is not just for the you can work ‘nerds’. Effective communication as cyber skills, a willingness to network and security co-operate with others are all essenanalysts and tial attributes for cyber security consultants in teams in society.

cyber security is definitely worth

security How might careers progress assessments, for people who get into consultancy cybersecurity?

advice There are a variety of roles for provision, those involved in cyber security. organisational These vary from compliance oriented risk auditing and risk assessment to cyber management, security operations involving security network incident and event monitoring with defence, security operations centres. incident Organisations need to defend response, what is critical to them through network identifying critical assets and improvinvestigations ing resilience and security as part of and forensic their risk management. computing: Those involved generally need to be networking together with their peers, which does need to involve face to face meetings if trust has to be established for secure information sharing as part of the cooperation aspect to cyber security work. This generally takes place through conferences and seminars.

CHOOSING subjects to study in school and courses to do at third level can be tricky. Figuring out what career you want to do can be overwhelming.

At smartfutures.ie, we want to help you discover the STEM subjects and careers that might be right for you. You have the opportunity to discover what types of STEM careers are available and hear from people who work in STEM related jobs.

You will see the wide range of careers available, discover the people that are working in STEM ,the organisations they’re working in and what their interests and skills are. We have helpful tools and resources for parents, teachers and students in our Explore and Discover section.

Discover whether your interests and skills could lead you to a career in STEM at smartfutures.ie.

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