Cyber espionage. It sounds exotic and exciting. The best part? Playing a role in preventing it is fairly accessible. Government agencies require hundreds of cyber security experts staffed full time to keep their systems secure and running the way they are supposed to.

This means that with the right educational background, there are many exciting opportunities to explore. In this article, we take a look at cyber security government careers that can help stop future cyber espionage.

What is cyber espionage?

As one might imagine, cyber espionage is the act of using digital techniques to retrieve sensitive government information. It’s popular (among those who are interested in this sort of thing) because it allows perpetrators to perform their crimes from a safe distance.

Imagine James Bond poking at a laptop instead of jumping out of an airplane. Meeting his next date not at a ritzy bar, but on eHarmony. Perhaps not the sort of riveting entertainment that franchises are built on, but decidedly safer.

Government agencies are constantly targeted by cyber terrorists and spies. People who want to access government systems, take information and generally spread fear or civil unrest.

While threats that could be described as “espionage” or “terrorism” usually happen at the government level, there are instances of them taking place in the public sector as well.

For example, it is widely believed that North Korea was responsible for the Sony email leaks—their response to a Seth Rogan film that portrayed the nation in an unflattering light.

Of course, the stakes on this breach were low. Instead of shutting down government services, it simply allowed the general public to find out what Sony higher-ups really thought about the Andrew Garfield Spiderman.

Nevertheless, the message was clear: Cybercrime can impact anyone. The effects are quick and devastating.

Fortunately, for every bad actor, there is a cyber security professional out there to stop them in their tracks.

Digital forensic expert

Forensics is the process of examining a crime to find out what happened and how. After physical crimes happen, forensic experts examine the scene, take samples, analyze them, and see where the evidence points. If you’ve ever watched any of the several dozen procedural shows on network television then you’ve witnessed a (very) fictionalized version of forensic police work.

In the context of cybercrime, forensic experts apply these skills to cyberspace. They access the impacted network, find out what happened, how access was gained, and from what part of the world it happened in.

Unfortunately, forensic experts usually only come in after something bad has already happened. They can’t prevent the crime they are investigating, but they can reduce the odds that the perpetrators will strike again.

By helping government and police agencies catch cyber criminals the risk of terrorist and espionage-related attacks shrinks considerably.

Cyber Security Analyst

When businesses are targeted by cyber criminals, it’s often with the intention of getting information—credit numbers, customer data, etc. This is bad, but for the general public, the impacts aren’t necessarily so severe.

When criminals target government agencies, the stakes are decidedly higher. These people usually plan their attacks with the purpose of creating fear and chaos (cyber terrorists) or retrieving sensitive state information (espionage).

Just last Spring, the entire nation of Ireland had a brush with cybercrime. Russian hackers going by the name of “Wizard Spider” (clearly they spent more time honing their hacking skills than they did choosing a name) essentially froze the health department out of their computer network. The hackers demanded $20 million to turn the digital network back over.

Ireland refused. The result? Weeks of service interruptions and many thousands of leaks.

All this is to say that no one needs cyber security analysts more than the government. People working in this field regularly review and update systems to make sure that they are as fortified as possible.

In the public sector, cyber security analysts often work freelance, going from business to business, improving their security, and then moving on.

The government, however, has more than enough cyber security needs to keep many analysts busy full-time.