The History of Cybersecurity
How did Cybersecurity come to be and how did it expand to become such a large field as we know it today?
Cybersecurity started on ARPANET, a computer network made and utilized by the military of the United States in the 1970s (this was in a time before the world wide web). A researcher by the name of Bob Thomas coded a program named Creeper that traveled from computer to computer, displaying the message “I’M THE CREEPER; CATCH ME IF YOU CAN” as it went along. Keep in mind, the Creeper program was completely harmless.
Ray Tomlinson, also a researcher, then coded another program called Reaper that chased and deleted Creeper. Because of this, Reaper is known as the first program that detected unwanted software, also called an antivirus software. And thus, with Reaper, the roots of cybersecurity began to develop.
The world wide web became available to the public in the 1990s. As the web grew in popularity, more data was stored digitally, and the exchange of data online increased as well. In response to this growing dependence on digital data, cybersecurity grew rapidly to keep up. And as the field of cybersecurity expanded, more malicious software was created to harm devices and steal data.
By the time phones that connected to the internet entered the market in the early 2000s (including the iPhone later on), the amount of consumer data online grew ever more. Phones were essentially small, convenient devices that allowed anyone to store, access, and deliver data at anytime. With this exponential growth of data storage in phones, cybersecurity continued to develop in importance and scale.
In the modern day, cybersecurity is more important than ever and is still growing. All data and information stored on devices and networks— social network accounts, commerce platforms, emails, important documents, photos, and so much more— rely on the field of cybersecurity for protection.
Hope you learned something valuable,
Tiffany Tu
