Cyber attacks that may be originating in China raise awareness of the need for more people getting trained in cyber security

A recent meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Jack Lew, the United States secretary of the treasury, focused in part on a number of cyber attacks on U.S. companies that apparently originated in China. The attacks are the most recent example of the worldwide rise in cyber attacks and the accompanying need for more people to handle cyber security.

American computer security experts have charged that more than 140 companies, including the New York Times, and government agencies worldwide have been hacked through attacks that originated in China. Chinese officials deny the charge.

Cyber security again reached the forefront of the news after an attack in South Korea, where computer systems at banks and television stations crashed after a cyber attack, possibly launched in North Korea.


Regardless of who is responsible for the attacks, the need for people to handle cyber security is clear. A recent article from the Washington Post said the U.S. Department of Defense is planning on adding more than 4,000 employees to the department’s Cyber Command. Quoting an unnamed official at the Pentagon, Computerworld said the expansion is needed because America is “faced with an increasing threat of a cyber attack that could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11.”

The need is widespread. The names and specific job descriptions depend on the company or government agency offering the job, but some of the jobs in demand include:

Network security specialist. People in this position monitor computer systems to make sure there are no unauthorized users in the system or security threats. Network security specialists also must plan ahead, developing ideas of where cyber attacks might come from and developing a response plan to handle such attacks. They may also develop or test software and firewalls.

Cyber security policy analyst. Someone in this job will oversee whatever plans are in place to prevent cyber attacks, taking responsibility for the effectiveness of a company or government agency’s cyber defenses.

Software developer. This person is responsible for actually writing the computer code used in developing cyber security protection for a computer system.

Information security analyst.  The job title used by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an information security analyst takes responsibility for developing a company’s security against cyber attacks. The first step is keeping up with the latest attacks and then finding ways to prevent the attacks from being successful against a specific computer system.

Pay for any of these jobs varies greatly depending on the specific company and government agency, as well as the region of the country where the job is located. The BLS combines information security analysts, web developers and computer network architects into one group, reporting the median average pay for all of them in May 2010 was $75,660.

The lowest 10% in that group earned less than $43,190, while the top 10% earned more than $119,940, according to the BLS.

The BLS furthers estimates, based on a survey by Robert Half Technology, that data security analysts made between $89,000 and $121,500 in 2012, while a network security administrator made between $85,000 and $117,750.

Education Needed for Cyber Security Workers

The level of education can vary depending on the job in the cyber security field.

However, most people who work as an information security analyst have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, programming or something related, according to the BLS. Some schools now offer undergraduate degrees in cyber security, an area that is expected to grow as the demand for cyber security grows.

Some of those working in cyber security, particularly those wishing to lead a team or department, now opt to seek a master’s degree. Specifically, according to the BLS, they seek a MBA with a concentration on information systems that includes courses in both business and computer science.

Completion of a master’s degree typically takes about two years of study after completion of an undergraduate degree.

How Antivirus Software Works: 4 Detection Techniques

An antivirus tool is an essential component of most antimalware suites. It must identify known and previously unseen malicious files with the goal of blocking them before they can cause damage. Though tools differ in the implementation of malware-detection mechanisms, they tend to incorporate the same virus detection techniques. Familiarity with these techniques can help you understand how antivirus software works.

Though endpoint antivirus tools may differ in their implementation of malware-detection approaches, the tend to incorporate the same 4 essential techniques.

• Signature-based detection
• Heuristics-based detection
• Behavioral detection
• Cloud-based detection

Virus detection techniques can be classified as follows:

• Signature-based detection uses key aspects of an examined file to create a static fingerprint of known malware. The signature could represent a series of bytes in the file. It could also be a cryptographic hash of the file or its sections. This method of detecting malware has been an essential aspect of antivirus tools since their inception; it remains a part of many tools to date, though its importance is diminishing. A major limitation of signature-based detection is that, by itself, this method is unable to flag malicious files for which signatures have not yet been developed. With this in mind, modern attackers frequently mutate their creations to retain malicious functionality by changing the file’s signature.

• Heuristics-based detection aims at generically detecting new malware by statically examining files for suspicious characteristics without an exact signature match. For instance, an antivirus tool might look for the presence of rare instructions or junk code in the examined file. The tool might also emulate running the file to see what it would do if executed, attempting to do this without noticeably slowing down the system. A single suspicious attribute might not be enough to flag the file as malicious. However, several such characteristics might exceed the expected risk threshold, leading the tool to classify the file as malware. The biggest downside of heuristics is it can inadvertently flag legitimate files as malicious.

• Behavioral detection observes how the program executes, rather than merely emulating its execution. This approach attempts to identify malware by looking for suspicious behaviors, such as unpacking of malcode, modifying the hosts file or observing keystrokes. Noticing such actions allows an antivirus tool to detect the presence of previously unseen malware on the protected system. As with heuristics, each of these actions by itself might not be sufficient to classify the program as malware. However, taken together, they could be indicative of a malicious program. The use of behavioral techniques brings antivirus tools closer to the category of host intrusion prevention systems (HIPS), which have traditionally existed as a separate product category.

• Cloud-based detection identifies malware by collecting data from protected computers while analyzing it on the provider’s infrastructure, instead of performing the analysis locally. This is usually done by capturing the relevant details about the file and the context of its execution on the endpoint, and providing them to the cloud engine for processing. The local antivirus agent only needs to perform minimal processing. Moreover, the vendor’s cloud engine can derive patterns related to malware characteristics and behavior by correlating data from multiple systems. In contrast, other antivirus components base decisions mostly on locally observed attributes and behaviors. A cloud-based engine allows individual users of the antivirus tool to benefit from the  experiences of other members of the community.

Author--- Lenny Zeltser(tech target)