Millennials Looking to Cybersecurity Careers, Security
Those of the Millennial Generation (born between 1980 and early 2000s) have upped their game to keep private information safe, but while they show a keen interest in cybersecurity careers, they don’t know exactly what that entails.
According to a Raytheon-NCSA Millennial survey, Preparing Millennials to Lead in Cyberspace, 87 percent of the 1,000 respondents say they are responsible for keeping themselves safe and secure online. More than two-thirds of young people between 18 and 26 years of age regularly follow cybersecurity developments, and 20 percent of those get this information from news outlets.
Privacy concerns kept 40 percent of them from downloading an app, an increase from 31 percent last year. This caution may be stemming from the fact that 60 percent fell victim to an online violation in the past year. After the breaches, 70 percent of victims changed an online behavior in response, including changing passwords, no longer storing financial data on retail sites, and being more careful about what they click on. Changing social media passwords occurred at a greater frequency this year – from 29 percent to 40 percent in the 2014 survey.
But this added caution hasn’t halted all risky behavior: 72 percent of Millennials surveyed connected to public WiFi without a password; 52 percent plugged in a USB device that someone else gave them.
While all of the media attention on cybersecurity has brought nearly 40 percent of Millennials to a point where they would like a career in making the Internet safer, nearly two-thirds don’t know what the cybersecurity profession is. The report recommends that schools promote cybersecurity awareness campaigns, including cybersecurity career possibilities, to better clarify the industry’s possibilities.
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