When Nana Pokuaah isn’t working at a pharmacy, she’s in school – though it might not look like it.
Eight hours a day, three days a week, Pokuaah, 31, sits in a French cafe in Chantilly, Va., with her laptop, taking an online class that could put her on the front lines of a battle in cyberspace that begins every time a person logs on to a computer. Pokuaah is studying to become a cybersecurity analyst trained in identifying and defeating cyberattacks.
The number of cyberattacks has almost doubled in the past five years – averaging 758,000 annually – according to the FBI’s Internet Criminal Complaint Center, also known as IC3. Those are the cases we know of. When the FBI infiltrated the Hive ransomware network in 2023, they discovered that only one in five victims had filed complaints with law enforcement. The growing threat has created a booming job …