Final answer:
The time and effort required to break a protective measure depends on several factors such as complexity, resources, and expertise. It can range from minutes to years or even decades.
Step-by-step explanation:
The time and effort required to break a protective measure depends on several factors such as the complexity of the measure, the resources available to the attacker, and the expertise of the attacker. In the field of computer security, breaking protective measures is often referred to as 'hacking'.
There are various types of protective measures such as encryption, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and access controls. Breaking these measures may involve exploiting vulnerabilities in the system, using brute force attacks, social engineering, or finding weaknesses in the implementation.
For example, breaking a simple password may require only a few minutes or hours of computing power, while breaking a complex encryption algorithm may take years or even decades with the most powerful computers available today.