25 Advisory Committee Input
Has the Advisory Committee been active at least twice per academic year?
Yes.
Describe the significant activities that have taken place during this review cycle?
The CITE/Cybersecurity program was allocated $50K from the Governor’s office to improve cybersecurity awareness and training between all eight state-funded post-secondary institutions. During the first year all of the eight schools were successful in developing a Charter between each college and each college’s administration signed off on the Charter. Between the eight colleges we have tested our connectivity and ran two operational tests between some of the eight colleges. Each college developed a Security Operations Center (SOC) to enhance not only their local programs, but also to assist the other colleges around the state in providing courses and training opportunities they may not provide at their institution. Our next operational test is to bring in local high school students and connect to one of the other eight colleges and provide a cybersecurity challenge to those high school students to solve remotely. This is scheduled for Fall 2024.
Each college chose an area they wanted to emphasize with their students for each of our SOC’s. We call our SOC, the CSOC for Cardinal Security Operations Center. The emphasis for our CSOC is data analysis using a Security Information Event Management system (SIEM) called Security Onion. All of our students in both the CITE and Cybersecurity programs use our CSOC to help them develop their skills in data analysis. An entry level position in cybersecurity is called “Analyst 1” and using Security Onion gives the student a “real world” experience in data analysis and purpose for alert thresholds in their networking systems.
Our Cybersecurity instructor was able to participate in a Cybersecurity High School Initiative (CHI) grant with City University. The purpose of this grant was to train area high school teachers in cybersecurity fundamentals and have those high school teachers teach a course/s in cybersecurity. We were able to select and train two local area high school teachers in the first year of the CHI program. One of the the high school teachers has completed one semester of two courses in Introduction to Cybersecurity and is in their second year of teaching the course this spring semester. The other teacher uses the Introduction to Cybersecurity to enhance his current Network Fundamentals class. This instructor is planning on bring on a stand-alone Introduction to Cybersecurity course this upcoming Fall 2024. The CHI program in starting it’s third year.
Our Advisory Committee has made several suggestions to enhance both programs:
- The CITE program has integrated Amazon Web Services, Microsoft 365, Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) into the current curriculum over the last three years.
- The CITE/Cybersecurity program has stood up a remote lab system called NetLab. This online system is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long. It gives CITE and Cybersecurity students access to live Cisco routers, switches, and firewalls to practice their configuration skills. NetLab also provides virtual labs in Computer Repair, Network Security, and Cybersecurity. This system enhances the student’s confidence in their configuration skills, especially when taking industry certification exams.