Thursday, June 29, 2017
Cybersecurity Training Effort In El Segundo Aimed At Next Generation
An all week, cybersecurity training effort being held this week in El Segundo--run by AT&T and the Air Force Association (AFA)--is educating teenagers on cybersecurity careers and skills, in hopes of building the next generation of cybersecurity efforts. The camps, part of the AFA's CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Education Program, are ongoing at AT&T's offices in El Segundo all this week.
The camp--which started on Monday and runs until Friday--is teaching teenagers on everything from cybersecurity, to virtual machines, file protection and monitoring, on both Windows and Linux. According to AT&T, its employees are involved in teaching the teens cybersecurity safety and ethics, basic network security skills, how to improve password security, notice phishing attempts, and much more. AT&T said around 80 teens are involved in the program in El Segundo this year.
The need for more cybersecurity professionals has been put into focus this week, as the massive Petya ransomware attack has crippled major corporate systems across the globe, including putting a major terminal at the Port of Los Angeles offline. The Petya attack has left shipping giant Maersk--a major adopter of IT technology in its operations--reverting to manual procedures and working by hand; caused monitoring systems at the Chernobyl nuclear plant to go offline; caused chaos at a unit of FedEx; shut down a chocolate factory run by Cdbury; among many other major impacts. Image: Teenagers this week in El Segundo, learning the basics of cybersecurity.