Cyber Security: A growing industry

Global security strategist Fortinet says that in 2016 they saw about half a million cyber-attack attempts per minute.

Some are famous; some not, but all have the potential to be very expensive and dangerous.

USA Today points out two recent large-scale attacks: Lockheed Martin’s F-22 fighter plans stolen by the Chinese and the so-called Panama Papers theft of millions of legal documents from the Law Firm of Mossack Fonseca.

In the first example, high-technology stolen from a top defense contractor directly threatens national security. In the second, hackers could use the information in those legal documents to score millions through insider trading.

An Industry of Hackers
Not surprisingly, the threat has spawned an industry. According to Forbes, there were openings for 1 million cyber-security jobs in 2016, and the industry is expected to grow from $75 billion to $170 billion by 2020.

Cesar Cerrudo, a professional hacker, and CTO of IOActive Labs says that companies and individuals keep making the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to cyber threats. He blames a false sense of security. But no one is secure.

Many once-criminal hackers are now being paid by governments and corporations to be the bad guy and test their systems.

In a real cloak-and-dagger world, cyber-security experts try to penetrate the work place by just looking important and walking into the building. Once in, they grab a computer and try to logon to the company network. How far they get tells the company how lax their security systems really are.

According to the DailyMail.com, these high tech hackers can make quite a bundle on testing corporate security. Cost of a full test runs up to $80,000.