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Nowadays cybersecurity is the new “Do not talk to strangers” or “do not go with anyone but mum or dad” our parents always repeated us since we were kids. To these typical sentences that taught us how to protect ourselves from physical danger, we can add new sentences like “do not click on weird advertising” or “be careful opening up emails”.

We usually hear about face to face crimes, but now we have to be aware that the world is changing and our technological way of living is adding new type of crimes: cybernetic crimes.

Cybersecurity crisis: Global Cyber-attack

Cyber-attacks are more and more common, and we are starting to see how their consequences increase both in the number of victims and economic taxation.

The massive informatic attack suffered last may 12th, has affected more that 70000 users in more than 74 countries, reminds us the importance of taking security actions in digital terms in order to protect companies and personal devices.

A Ranso… what?

Ransomware is a kind of virus, that you could receive through an email with an attachment. When you open the e-mail, the virus automatically executes itself, encrypting your computer files.

Other usual way to be infected is by an evil website. We could say that this is a “digital kidnapping” of the computer, because you can not read your files and if you want to decode it you have to pay to the kidnapper. The internet connection of different computers make the spreading of the virus possible, affecting the rest of the pcs connected to the system.

This is the crime the highest profits generated to hackers in 2016, giving us the tip that would be more and more frequent in 2017. The payment for the kidnapped information is made in bitcoins, a very hard tracking currency that is getting more and more value every passing day.

The victims

Although anyone of us could be a digital victim, this kind of attacks are usually pointed to big companies willing to pay huge amounts of money to rescue their with valuable data. Therefore, big companies are prepared with an important IT department, staffed with cybersecurity experts.

However, there are many cases of SMEs and freelancers who have been affected by cyber-attacks, because having an IT department is not affordable for all of them. In those cases, it is essential to take preventing measures and count on an external service who help us maintaining our network clean. Preventing is the first thing to do: choose a good virus protection system, including firewall and antispyware (protect your pc from remote sky). It is very important to update the last version of every program. New versions are usually born because developers discovered and repair vulnerabilities. If you do not have the last version of an antivirus is like leaving the windows open for the kidnappers.

Cybersecurity technicians and lawyers: the most demanded professionals for the next few years

Not only computers have internet connection, the IoT (Inthernet of things) is another IT field looking for connecting the highest number of objects and people through internet. For instance, we can have electrical appliance connected to the Smartphone and make them work remotely (like the washing machine). In a macro level, the IoT creates the famous Smart cities. In the near future a cyber-attack could mean to leave an entire city in the dark.

The technology has already developed the necessary software to be implemented in the vast majority of objects around us, but we have to consider that technology is developing faster than society and laws. The technological field is plenty of loopholes, leading to an increasing demand of professionals willing to create a global legal frame to penalize digital crimes.

Soft Profile: Fans of what they do

A Young British guy, at only 22 years old, fan of videogames and a cybersecurity expert, was the discoverer of how to stop the virus spreading, not because it was his job, just because he loves what he does. That is the most requested skill of the majority of professionals of the IT sector according to our experience in ECB Engineering Firm, recruitment consultancy specialized in the IT sector.

How many years of experience a cybersecurity professional should have? There are few professionals specialized in cybersecurity and their age is not more than 45. Cybersecurity has been in the front row for so little that for the first time in history, the young ones, studying and learning from videogames, are those who are leading the world to the future.