80 proactive students, burning eyes, interesting questions — this was our first lecture for students and high school students from Odesa IT Family together with Odesa National University named after I.I. and technologies, and with the support of the educational tech-space Atom Space.

This time, Vadym Chakryan, Information Security Officer DataArt, and Maria Subach, People Business Partner at Provectus, shared their knowledge.

Vadym Chakryan told the students about cyber security.

• Cyber security is bad and good, what’s the difference?
• Is cyber security a loss center or a business enabler?
• Is it possible to achieve a state of cyber security?
• What aspects of cyber security should Ukrainian businesses pay attention to now?

Everything that changes in our environment changes the cybersecurity footprint as well. Recently, the cyber world has become very complex — there is a lot of technology and no boundaries: people have their laptops, wear smart watches right on their body, etc.

An important point: there are no completely secure systems. In 2010, the Stuxnet malware appeared. It was an attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program. What happened? If we look at this factory, it’s disconnected from the internet, but it’s running on some software that needs to be updated. Accordingly, there is a supplier of this software that has been “infected”. This pest caused the centrifuges to spin 80% faster than they should, which of course quickly disabled them. At the same time, there were no changes in the indicators. Everything is hackable.

The consequences can be devastating. An example of an attack in Ukraine in 2017 is NotPetya. Accounting software was infected. Inside was a malware that spread itself over the network, where it got into and infected other systems. It was such a massive phenomenon that thousands of people at one point were no longer able to do business. The negative consequences were felt in the country’s economy, and it took a lot of time to recover.

What now?

The democratization of AI creates security risks.

• Fake voice
• Deep fakes
• Targeted phishing using NLP
• ChatGPT is changing the rules
• AI wars are coming

As an example, with the help of a fake voice, the attackers called on behalf of the SEO of the bank and asked to change the details where the funds were to be transferred. Of course, the effect of urgency, etc. was added to the professional forgery, as a result the attack was successful.

Cybercrime is growing rapidly.

Vadym also gave several examples of useful literature on the topic of cyber security, such as The Five Forces That Change Everything: How Technology is Shaping Our Future. We will soon tell you more about all the books in our useful literature section.

Maria Subach shared her knowledge on interview questions: tips and tricks.

The first rule of interview preparation: you must prepare for the interview!

Tips for preparing for an interview:

• Prepare a short presentation about yourself (and in English too)
• Prepare answers to general questions:
• Where did you study?
• what did you do and what are you interested in outside of work
• who do you see yourself in the future (in 1, 5, 10 years)
• Don’t be late! And if you already understand that you are going to be late, be sure to warn the interviewer about it.

It is important not to tell the employer your whole life. Relevant information — briefly about the development of your experience, about the technologies\tasks\projects you liked to work with, what motivates you at work.

The biggest problem, as a rule, is to talk about your shortcomings. Think it through in advance.

STAR interview: what is it?

• S (situation) = Situation: Describe the context in which you did the work or encountered the problem at work.
• T (target) = Task: Next describe your responsibility in this situation.
• A (action) = Action: Then describe how you completed the task or attempted to cope with the challenge.
• R (result) = Result: Finally, explain the results or results obtained as a result of the action taken.

When you are asked where you see yourself in 1-5-10 years, it is important for the employer to understand whether you have a specific goal to which you are going. It is important that you make it clear that you are interested in development, and not just go with the flow.

The main important points during the interview from Maria:

• Don’t lie, if you don’t know the answer — say so. There are questions to which there is no correct answer and the logic of your thoughts is interesting.
• Try to have a dialogue. Do not turn this process into an interrogation.
• Have a confident or open posture, not a closed one.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions!
• Don’t be afraid of anything! A negative result is still a result and an experience.

During the question-and-answer session, the most active students who received gifts from Provectus were identified.

You can also watch from the lecture: