Cracking
20 Education
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.
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 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
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-
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.
