Information security analysts keep a close eye on Internet use at their companies COOL STEM CAREERS INFORMATION SECURITY ANALYST 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y S K I L L S L I B R A R Y CHAPTER ONE DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET Eric is sitting in his office Computer monitors are all around him But only one has his attention this morn ing He’s been watching it a lot over the last few weeks
The company Eric works for is worth billions of dollars It has dozens of divisions thousands of products and offices all over the world Eric works at the company’s main headquar ters This means the most powerful people in the company work in the same building as he does Eric’s boss has been very nervous lately She believes that someone inside the company has been stealing secrets about a new product they’ve been developing The product could earn the company billions of dollars in profit Those billions will be lost if she’s right She’s been pushing Eric to find out if her suspicions are true Eric has told her to be patient But her patience is starting to run out He keeps his eyes trained on that one monitor waiting and hoping And then it suddenly happens An identification code pops up on the screen The code is a sequence of numbers separated by a few periods here and there Eric knows exactly what it means He picks up the phone and calls his boss Then he places another call After that he bolts out of his office and hurries down the hallway Two burly men in suits join him when he reaches the corner There are other people around They are unsure of what’s going on They step aside as the three men rush past Eric’s boss seems to appear out of nowhere and trails close behind At the end of the hall Eric and the two men reach the door to one of the bathrooms They burst in It doesn’t seem
Skilled computer users can break into computer networks and steal valuable information COOL STEM CAREERS INFORMATION SECURITY ANALYST 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y S K I L L S L I B R A R Y as though anyone’s in there Eric knows better Over there he says It’s the one at the end The two men go to the last stall and push open the door Sure enough an employee is typing furiously on an iPad His face reddens and his shoul ders sag when he looks up He knows he’s been caught
As the culprit is led out of the bathroom Eric’s boss tells the man that he will need a good lawyer One of the company’s top executives comes down an hour later to personally thank Eric for a job well done Does this story sound like something out of a suspense movie It’s not The everyday responsibilities of being an information security analyst include tracking down people who violate security policies The main goal of the information security business is preventing important information from falling into the wrong hands The desire to protect valuable information is nothing new Examples of secret codes written by craftspeople to protect trade secrets have been found among ruins from the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia This means that infor mation security existed more than 7,000 years ago Ancient Greek and Roman military leaders are believed to have used ciphers Ciphers are methods of secret writing that can be understood only by the person receiving the message Secret codes were also widely used during World Wars I and II They were often used with the aid of cryptographic machines These devices scrambled messages that were sent over telephone or telegraph wires so enemy forces could not intercept and decode them
