Students learning about cyber security

WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) - With so much personal information online, surfing the web and visiting social media sites can make you vulnerable to being hacked.

So students at New England Institute of Technology are trying to help.

"What they're trying to do in the two courses is figure out whether or not a system is vulnerable to hacking. We call that a penetration testing course," said Clark Alexander, Assoc. Professor at New England Institute of Technology.

Cyber security and digital forensics courses can provide students with the skills to detect and retrieve vital information.

"They're gonna take a machine that's been victimized in some way, shape, or form and create a forensic image that can be introduced into a court or some kind of other proceedings,"said Professor Alexander.

Cyber security is taught to students looking to further their career in the tech world.

"Hopefully I'd like to get into some sort of university or other college and help out with their security systems. Anything from networking to their actual physical security which would be kinda cool," said David Case, a student.

These students have even applied what they've learned in their day to day computer use.

"I've updated my virus software since then, made sure that I've had firewalls enabled things of that nature. For my computers at work I've gone through and made sure that my security programs on there function properly," said Johnathan Teixeira, a student.

They even learn that hackers are smartening up on the latest technology.

"They're constantly getting insight on what it is that hackers are doing in order to hack their machines in order to hack servers at large so they're learning how to protect themselves more anything else by making sure that they staying on top of paths and updates, they don't download and install software where they're not really too sure where it coming from,"added Professor Alexander

He even has a few tips for the everyday user.

"I would say make sure that you don't download anything that you don't know where it's coming from. I would say change your password regularly. Use complex passwords. And make sure you don't use the same password everywhere."

In addition, stay away from certain viruses that seem too good to be true.

"There's a browser extension out there called Crossrider and it is going to load a particular piece of malicious software known as lilyjade and what lilyjade is, it's not detectable by any anti-virus. The hacker who wrote it wants $1,000 per copy and he claims it will run on any operating system."

Students in cyber security courses are trained to search for information that a user thinks they deleted, but really still exists somewhere in the system.

So a word of warning: if you don't want it seen never put it online to begin with.