How the European Cybersecurity Month makes us aware of the threats of the future

The latest report from Microsoft highlights the alarming frequency of cyberattacks: 7000 attempts per second to hack passwords impressively illustrate the dangers to which both companies and individuals are exposed. These findings, published in the Digital Defense Report 2024, underline the increasing relevance of European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM), which takes place annually in October. This month, the focus is on raising awareness of cyber threats and promoting security-conscious behavior online.

Especially in times when state actors and criminal hacker groups alike are threatening digital infrastructure, it is crucial that we rely not only on technological solutions, but also on data-driven insights and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to continuously improve defenses. At XU Exponential University of Applied Science, where you can study the latest developments in Data Science and AI, it is precisely this intersection of data analytics and cybersecurity that is being explored.

Data science plays a central role in identifying anomalies and threats in big data – like the 78 trillion signals Microsoft used for its analysis. By using machine learning and AI, these patterns can be recognized more efficiently and attacks can be responded to automatically. This is also a focus of our study programs: how can we not only ward off cyber attacks by analyzing and processing data, but also develop proactive security measures?

The European Cybersecurity Month offers the students an excellent opportunity to put their theoretical knowledge into practice and critically scrutinize current developments in the cyber world. The challenges in the field of cybersecurity are not only technical, but also social – from the manipulation of elections to the disruption of infrastructure. Protecting these areas is an interdisciplinary endeavor in which data science and AI play a key role.