Most young people do not know what a cybersecurity professional is, the skills required to reach and excel at a high level or a pathway to pursue the goal of a cyber-based career. The joy and impact of learning cybersecurity through competitions is still in its infancy.

Employers are citing a significant disconnect between the needs of their organizations and what higher education institutions are turning out in their cybersecurity-related education programs, with only 23 percent believing that college graduates are fully prepared to enter the cybersecurity industry with a certain knowledge set and applicable technical skills.

This fast pitch session will describe how the Information Technology—Networking and Cybersecurity department at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) established a K-12 pathway with a large local district, Blue Valley Schools. The pathway provides students the opportunity to complete the JCCC Cybersecurity Certificate program tuition-free alongside their high school education. Successful students will receive both their diploma and the Cybersecurity Certificate upon graduation from high school. The session will discuss:

Western Governors University (WGU) never had a club until 2020. Our Club went from 0 to 3,500 students in the first year. Currently We have 5,500 in our student club and 2,500 in our Alumni Club. In ten minutes I can provide an overview of how to build a robust club that helps students learn, network and prosper in today’s educational landscape.

As the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, the critical shortage of cybersecurity professionals continues to expand, particularly in Critical Infrastructure Sectors. This session will highlight three innovative cybersecurity workforce development programs, funded by the NCAE-C Program to address that challenge. An overarching goal is to support other CAE-C designated institutions in developing similar upskilling and reskilling training programs to complement their academic degree programs and multiply the pathways toward cybersecurity jobs.

Concerns with cyber-attacks in the form of ransomware are on the mind of many executives and leadership staff in all industries. Inaction is not an option, and approaching the topic with real, honest, and hard discussions will be valuable ahead of such a possible devastating experience. This research note aims to bring thoughtfulness to the topics of ethics in the role of cybersecurity when dealing with ransomware events.

Software reverse engineering skills are fundamental to producing a capable cyber security workforce. However, analyzing binaries is often difficult for computer science students and others in related areas due to the curriculum emphasis on efficient software development.

In this Fast Pitch Session, I will share with other CAE institutes how CAE-CD designation has helped The Citadel take Cyber Programs and Activities to the next level. The Citadel started with an undergraduate minor in Cybersecurity in 2012, and became CAE-CD in 2016 with the academic path of BS in Computer Science with a minor in Cybersecurity. The Citadel was the second college in the State of South Carolina with CAE-CD designation. Students from The Citadel Students have been awarded DoD CySP Scholarship every year since 2017.

This presentation outlines how we built the Openstack infrastructure, automated the implementation of student projects, and work with students so they treat the Capstone Projects as real-life jobs. At USD, we found that local businesses were reluctant to allow students the opportunity to evaluate, and implement security on an operational system. We developed the USD Cyber Cloud (a private cloud using OpenStack) to have an isolated sandbox that can be quickly configured to give the student (Student Groups) a fully functional business network system.

This talk will discuss the lessons learned from a project put in place by Nova Southeastern University (NSU), College of Computing and Engineering in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Public Schools (MDCPS) on a dual-enrollment program for high-school students from minority and underserved schools throughout the Miami-Dade district.