Three major corporations that recently cut ties with WikiLeaks felt the wrath of hackers last week, which highlighted the nation's growing demand for qualified cybersecurity professionals.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Visa, PayPal and MasterCard fielded a host of cyber attacks following the companies' decisions to block payments to WikiLeaks, the controversial website that has gained national headlines for releasing confidential State Department documents. Visa and Mastercard both suffered website outages last week, while PayPal's site slowed down but managed to avoid a system crash.

A group of hackers, who went by the name "Anonymous," released a statement that said they weren't interested in stealing people's personal information on these sites, but instead hoped to raise awareness about the "underhanded" techniques used by businesses to impair WikiLeaks' ability to function, the news provider reported.

The media outlet said that last week's cyber attackers were relatively unsophisticated, which raises concern among financial companies about their ability to thwart more dangerous efforts. Clients who use these online services have called on companies to build a new method to ensure customer security.

The Southeast Missourian reports that a Missouri-based university will launch a cyber crime justice degree in an effort to meet the urgent demand for more cybersecurity professionals. The school's board of regents approved the bachelor's degree program last week, and the university will begin offering classes in the fall of 2011.

The 124-hour program will include courses that focus on telecommunications, computer science, mathematics and web application security. The dean of the institution said that there is a real shortage of qualified individuals in this field, thus government information and private data is susceptible to cyber attacks.

An advisory committee at the university said that all major industries, including banking, healthcare, manufacturing and law enforcement, have reported that they need more cybersecurity professionals, according to the media outlet.

According to CBS News in Baltimore, there are 360 million unauthorized probes at the Pentagon every day. In the business and finance industries, thefts of data cost the U.S. economy about $20 billion each year. According to the CEO of a company that designs computer software for the government, the number of cybersecurity jobs is going to explode during the next decade.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that the number of employment opportunities for network systems and data communications analysts, which is one of the fastest growing occupations in the nation, will increase by 53 percent by 2018.

Individuals who are interested in cybersecurity positions may benefit from web-based ecommerce training or a communications degree online.