Universities Are Stepping Up Training For More Front-Line Workers

Uploaded on 2024-03-28 in JOBS-Careers, FREE TO VIEW

If you recall the Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack in 2021 that targeted the network’s digital systems, it wreaked havoc on consumers, gas prices, airline travel, and commerce throughout the country. The breach of this critical infrastructure, consisting of 5,500 miles of pipeline that moved oil from the Gulf of Mexico throughout much of the Northeast, was considered a national security threat. For good reason.

It was so worrisome, in fact, that President Joe Biden declared a National State of Emergency. The federal government’s three-letter agencies - the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, among others - were notified and private security firms were dispatched so that Colonial Pipeline could regain control of its systems. But not before a ransom was paid.

Sadly, cyber-attacks are increasingly on the rise and showing no signs of slowing – and they are costing industry trillions of dollars -- $10.5 trillion by 2025, by some estimates. Over 353 million people were affected by data compromises in 2023, according to Statista. In real terms - or damages closer to your own wallet – financial losses can range from thousands of dollars to tens of thousands.

Banks. Hospitals. Water systems. Infrastructure. They are all vulnerable. We are all vulnerable in a myriad of ways against looming threats of phishing scams, malware attacks, and hacks designed to create chaos and cause great disruptions in our lives.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that cybersecurity is essential in a digital age, but every company, government entity, organization, and individual needs protection. We need front-line cyber-defenders the same way we need emergency responders like police officers, firefighters, nurses, and military personnel. If recent history has taught us anything, cyber defense is a national security matter that hits incredibly close to home.

Why? Because the threats are growing from state-sponsored groups, organized syndicates, and cyber-crooks who are using it as a tool of warfare, terror, political destabilization, and outright theft. New threats created by artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies will only exacerbate the challenges.

For these reasons, the demand for such jobs is on the rise. Cybersecurity jobs will grow by 32 percent through 2032, or 16,800 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with more than half a million job openings in recent years.

At Pace University, where I am the dean of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, we partner with the federal government on a program that provides scholarships to students in exchange for post-graduate service. It’s called CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service, and it’s somewhat modeled like the U.S. Military Academies where students earn a bachelor’s or master’s (or both) with the help of scholarships, they then go on to work for the government, often in security agencies.

We aren’t alone in training cyber-warriors. Pace is joined by the likes of Rochester Institute of Technology, Northeastern, New York University, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel University, The Citadel, Penn State, and many others throughout the country, all of whom partner with the federal government to fortify our armies that protect our digital and critical infrastructure. At Pace’s Pleasantville campus, we recently opened a Cyber Range, or what I like to call a CIA-style war room where faculty teach our students the ins-and-outs of identifying, defending, and mitigating cyber-attacks in a simulated setting. In real time. Under real pressure. It’s as hands-on and experiential as education gets.

Recently, students were engaged in an exercise where hackers were trying to breach a dam by jamming up the IT systems that controlled water release. On a series of screens and dashboard appeared coding loaded with clues – invisible to a layperson - that cyber-predators were looking for system vulnerabilities. The task for our students was to shore up the systems.

All of this may sound like a Tom Clancy plot with international intrigue and espionage. In many ways, it is. But the challenges we face are not fiction: Cybersecurity is not a luxury. It is essential for fortifying our digital landscape and infrastructure and securing our global security.

Dr. Jonathan Hill is Dean of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University

Imge: Ideogram

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