By: Josh Nichols, Quaker Valley H.S

Cyber warfare is one of the most unknown issues in the world. It’s one of those issues that we THINK we understand, but most of us may have never heard of it or we have, but know nothing about it.

Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.

In a recent survey it was reported that 90 percent of all businesses suffered some sort of computer hack over the past 12 months and 77 percent of these companies felt that they were successfully attacked several times over the same period of time.  But that’s business … and most of us don’t worry about business because we’re still focused on education.  But Cyber attacks are increasing … and they affect all of us, even students.  Here’s a few points:

• 360 million credit card accounts  were stolen and are being sold on the black market over the past year.

• 233 million ebay users were hacked and personal information was stolen in a matter of 2 months.

• The Montana Health Department got hacked in  July of 2013 but was only discovered in may 2014 where over 1 million patients’ personal information was stolen.

• 150 Million user accounts  were  affected by attack on Microsoft and Sony game servers.

• 50,000 attacks happen every second and around 200 terabytes of attacks are tracked by norse every day.

• 15 million Americans will have their identity stolen in a year. 

These are a few of the reasons why this issue needs to be addressed: and no, I’m not trying to help out some online defense businesses – but how many times have you heard about someone getting their email hacked or an identity being stolen and thought it will never happen to you, or that it was just an isolated incident.  In reality, these are examples of cyber warfare, they are large scale by large and dangerous organizations and even run by other countries that seek to weaken our country economically.

So what can we do about it?  We’re just students right?  I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, but here’s a couple ideas:

1. Research and present on cyber warfare in your classes.  We all have opportunities to select topics for projects and assignments.  More of us talking about this will have an effect with our parents and teachers

2. Take computer and computer science classes and ask for them if your school doesn’t offer them. Schools will teach subjects that students demand, and too many of us have to learn coding and computer science on our own.

3. Take your STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) classes seriously. Math matters, it’s probably the most important subject for our future career, but it’s also the most avoided.

4. Investigate careers in cyber security and seek out professionals in these careers. People love to share what they do, although many cyber security people won’t be able to talk specifics, they can share the best path to get into these careers.

5. Ask questions and talk about cyber warfare and security in your social networks. Nothing spreads the word faster than students like us getting our friends and networks on board, and we have the power to make big changes.

Want to know more about jobs in Cyber Security?  Check out our link below to the Top 10 Cyber Security jobs featured in our Magazine!  Every issue of STEM Jobs covers top jobs in 3 -4 industries, and you can access it for free by clicking the link above to View the Magazine!