“Now you see kids that are like two and three walking around with an iPad. They need to understand that there are implications for what they do,” said Daytona State College Associate Professor Dr. Philip Craiger.
Dr. Craiger is the principal investigator of Daytona State College’s Advanced Cyberforensics Education Consortium.
He said computer glitches like the ones that took down United Airlines, the Wall Street Journal's website and even halted trading on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday are examples of how we’re all vulnerable, whether we know it.
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“What’s even more important is the fact that our most important things are connected to the computers, including banking, water, power and communications and transportation," Craiger said. "So you can imagine if one of these complex systems goes down what happens.”
Homeland Security officials said Wednesday's issues are likely not the work of a cyberattack.
But Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday the three incidents were reason enough to need cybersecurity reform.
Senator Nelson proposed a Data Security and Breach Notification Act bill in January, designed “to protect consumers by requiring reasonable security policies and procedures to protect data containing personal information, and to provide for nationwide notice in the event of a breach of security.”
“We do need a culture change. What we really need is rather than applying security as a Band-Aid, is that we need to build security from the startup,” Craiger said.
Dr. Craiger believes young people are the key to preventing future computer issues like the one that shut down the New York Stock Exchange.
“We need to hire more people with a security background but in order to do that we need to train more people, so we need to get kids starting out early being considerate of security and privacy,” Craiger said.