Can Hacker Attacks Create Jobs?

The New York Timesreports in “Web Hackings Rattle Media Companies” by Brian Stelter how hackers have broken into the websites of PBS, Fox.com, and Gawker Media.   These break-ins have had horrible results for all of the sites.  According to Stelter, one of the producers likened the hacking to throwing rocks at a storefront window.

As more and more people use the internet to gather their news, what effects will these affronts on the media have on the way people read and assess the news?  Will they have to go through several thought processes just to determine whether or not an article is “real” or not?

Maybe more importantly to recruiters, what jobs will be lost or generated as a result of these attacks on websites?

Certainly, these attacks could effect the bottom line of the companies being attacked.  The public may start to question the accuracy of the information on these sites, and losing that credibility could lead to losses in advertising revenue.  And lower revenue certainly won’t help these companies to create jobs.

On the other hand, as websites begin to invest more money to protect themselves, they will need to hire computer programmers and security experts.  While internet security has been a growth industry since the birth of the internet, these highly public hacker attacks could lead to an internet security boom.  And with the growing prevalence and sophistication of these hacker attacks, this may be a bubble that won’t burst for quite some time.