Today, we live much of our lives online. From the e-mail we log into every day for work or play, to the websites we rely on for everything from news to banking to entertainment, the number of hours we spend online is steadily growing.

For younger generations, raised from infancy on computers and gadgets, engagement with the Web will only continue to expand. However, as more people use the Internet for countless aspects of their lives, the incidence of cyber crime has also grown exponentially.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) stated in its 2009 annual report on Internet crime that the number of complaints by users has been increasing steadily since 2007. It’s a concern for everyone, from the average user to government agencies, in America and around the world. With the growing cyber crime numbers, the demand for trained cyber specialists has multiplied exponentially, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the world.

In fact, the United States Department of Defense has a branch, the Cyber Crime Center, devoted to cybersecurity. The Department also puts on the DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge to “pioneer new investigative tools, techniques and methodologies.”

In an economy struggling to create new jobs, the cybersecurity profession is gaining attention from both young students looking for a career path and mid-career professionals seeking a more in-demand field of work. A number of schools are offering programs to train students for the profession, such as Utica College, which offers both bachelor’s and master’s in cybersecurity.

Those programs are attracting a diverse group of students, from high school graduates to corporate IT specialists, and offer them opportunities to find jobs in government and private business alike. The master’s cybersecurity degree has a strong appeal for those working in government agencies like the NSA, CIA and Department of Defense, as concerns about cyber attacks on the nation’s government and infrastructure grow.

For people seeking career change, cybersecurity has a lot of attractions. It’s a fast-paced and always-evolving career, and working to protect network security is a job with high importance. In addition, where other careers are seeing decline due to technological changes, cybersecurity promises increasing demand as we continue to become more dependent on the Web. For those who are transitioning from another field, online programs offered by Utica College make it more convenient to earn a bachelor’s in cybersecurity or a master’s in cybersecurity – intelligence and forensics.

A state-of-the-art career like cybersecurity is one that is in high demand, at the top levels of business and government. It’s been reported that the Pentagon’s computers alone are targeted thousands of times every day, and that there is a need for as much as a tenfold increase in the number of workers who have specialized cybersecurity experience. Enrolling in programs which offer that kind highly specialized training, like those offered by Utica College, can be the first step in a long-lasting and rewarding career.