Brown's emphatic message to the students was clear from the outset of his presentation. "It's not a matter of how the next cyber intrusion will take place, it's when," he said.

Brown gave examples of how hackers break into corporate servers to access personal accounts. He pointed to well-known hacker, Guccifer, who leaked information on several senior government officials after hacking into the e-mail account of the sister of former President George W. Bush by fooling the so-called security questions needed to reset a password.

Brown offered a few remedies, such as picking something opposite of a known fact, especially for individuals in the public eye. He also highlighted a few corporate security measures used at Dun & Bradstreet.

"Recently, we added a couple of technical controls like geo-login locations, so we know that if you've never logged in from Romania, then we can block you and thwart a potential intrusion," noted Brown.

He discussed the wide variety of hackers out there, noting that some hackers are unsophisticated individuals operating on their own, while other groups are state-sponsored, stealthy operators. The bottom line from a corporate perspective, Brown says, is to employ a team of cyber security professionals and leadership that is able to consistently stay a step ahead of hackers in an ever-changing threat environment.

"We have to be as clever as the next hacker, like Guccifer and 2.0, by using false doors, data analytics, computer forensics and counter social engineering methods," he said.