Week 1 Post - Introduction

Hello world,

My name is Dipak Acharya, pursuing a master's degree in Cyber Security from Bellevue University. It's about that time I go back to search my CYBR 608 class blog and learn about blogging. Luckily I found it. I am close to finishing up with my Masters in cyber security, and this is my final semester if everything goes as planned. I am using the same blog for my last class CYBR 650. It feels amazing when you realize you had a dream and wanted to accomplish so bad and finally dream coming true. Some of the classes were challenging especially the ethical hacking course, but other than that I had fun learning about cyber. Hopefully, I can utilize Master’s Degree to get to the cyber career field and continue to improve myself. Once I finish my degree, I am planning to work on certification like CISSP and CEH. I hear a lot of things about how it can help in your IT field and potentially help to land a job in a cyber-career field.

All the classes I took at Bellevue University were very helpful as far as knowledge wise, and I am sure it will help me to strengthen my knowledge in the overall cyber field further. The best part of the online college is an opportunity you get to read other students perspective on the similar topic and adding your ideas to it. I was never a fan of the online student until I joined Bellevue University. It helps to become an independent researcher. All the professors I had were very helpful and would respond promptly. Now, I think back, and I can never think of going back to traditional schools. Thanks to Bellevue University.

I think writing a blog is an excellent idea to share knowledge and experience. Also, it encourages to research and increases knowledge on a particular topic. Also, it helps to raise awareness about the new threats, trending cyber news and prevention methods. Hackers have gotten so sophisticated that sometimes it seems they are outsmarting government agencies and cyber-related companies. We have seen many incidents of cyber threats where hackers can cause grave damage to national security, especially to the United States. The United States has been a big target for cyber criminals. The virtual world makes it harder to find those criminals, so the best options we have are to secure our systems and use the best security methods applicable. The examples of cyber incidents were SONY hack and OPM cyber breach. It is pretty common that as soon as significant incident happen, the government most likely to blame other countries like China/Russia/IRAN. I always thought of why we can’t do better than this. I believe we should be able to identify the exact location and individuals responsible for those attacks. With the growing number of cyber professionals in the United States will contribute to protecting the critical infrastructure better. I think we are little behind the pace of training and protecting computer systems; otherwise, hackers should not be able to attack from the government to banking systems. For example: In my eight years of experience working as a federal contractor, I have seen many systems or application that is outdated, missing patching and very vulnerable to the overall systems. Many tools and services have been used for many months. This is where hackers take advantage of our weaknesses. The government should audit every IT infrastructure and remove the ones that are not being used for extended time. This will help to decrease cost, labor and increase security effectiveness. Again, this is just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

That is all for today. Please visit my blog often and comment. Thanks.

Update: Wow I just read news about the recent Yahoo hack. Finally, government agencies like FBI and DOJ coming with concret actions aginst the hackers and hopefully they can bring to the justice. It is pretty alarming when you see Russian diplomat and Russian government officials directly involved in the hacking activities. Events like this will definitely help to decrease the cyber incident in some cases but time will tell how two countries react each other.         

here is the news link if you are interested reading.
             

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/politics/justice-yahoo-hack-russia/index.html