The Next Generation and Cyber Security

It is no secret that cyber crimes have been on the rise over the past few years, and they are showing no signs of slowing down.  So much of the country’s critical infrastructure is tied into the internet and can be accessed by cyber criminals, because of this Millennials and Gen Z have a new challenge when it comes to defending their future against adversaries.  This is where NCSA comes in with their current research.

The NCSA is an organization dedicated to building “strong public/private partnerships to create and implement broad-reaching education and awareness efforts to empower users at home, work and school with the information they need to keep themselves, their organizations, their systems and their sensitive information safe and secure online and encourage a culture of cybersecurity” [5].  Its board of directors is made up of cyber security specialists from private sector companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Lenovo, Visa, Mastercard, USBank and Wells Fargo, among others.  In “The Annual Cybersecurity Attitudes and Behaviors Report 2021” published by NCSA they take an in depth look at the attitudes and behaviors of two thousand United Sates (US) and United Kingdom (UK) respondents to their survey. 

In the survey NCSA focused on six key areas of cybersecurity [1].

1. Creating and managing passwords
2. Applying Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
3. Installing the latest updates
4. Checking message legitimacy
5. Recognizing and reporting phishing
6. Backing up data

From these six key areas NCSA found that “64% of the participants reporting that they didn’t have access to any kind of cybersecurity advice or training. Of those participants with access to cybersecurity training, most made use of it (73%), demonstrating people’s willingness to learn” [1].  What this means is that if provided with proper education and training people would take advantage of it which could help protect our critical infrastructure.