By Jamie Null
Positions in the cyber security industry are on track to become the jobs of the future. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the growth rate for jobs in information security is projected at 37 percent through 2022. This demand for the industry comes from an increase in cyber attacks and the need for information security in an ever-increasing technological world. To meet this need in the Mountain State, one higher education institution and one private academy are helping students make their way into a defining era of technology.
In March 2019, Morgantown Learning Academy’s (MLA) tech team won first place in the middle school division at the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. A month later, Marshall University established Women in Cyber (WInC) to help females in technology find support and visibility in their field. The two organizations are building up existing cyber security infrastructure in the state to help train students for cyber security roles with the hope of creating new jobs in West Virginia.
Morgantown Learning Academy’s Team πthons
Earlier this year, a rookie middle school team from MLA competed against roughly 3,500 teams and took first place at the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. The team is the first from West Virginia to qualify and compete in the competition, which was created by the Air Force Association to help encourage students to pursue careers in cyber security or STEM fields.
The West Virginia team’s name, πthons, is a double play on the mathematical constant pi and the Python computer programming language. At the competition, the team was given virtual images of a variety of operating systems and tasked with finding and remedying cyber security vulnerabilities in those systems while maintaining critical functions of the operating systems during each six-hour competition round.
The team consists of five students—Braedyn Hill, Thalia Krissoff, Andy Loos, Hayden Monday and Khensa Rahman—and is coached by Sharda Mohammed, Donovan Monday, Brian Hill and Ibrahim Rahman. The students trained at least twice a week from September to February for the March competition.
“We are very fortunate to have a supportive school administration at MLA,” says Mohammed. “We also utilized our community resources, like valuable coach training from West Virginia’s NASA Independent Verification & Validation Educator Resource Center, our world-ranking Mountaineer Area RoboticS high school team members and several team parents with IT and team building training. It’s most certainly a community effort to bring great programs like this to the state.”
Mohammed believes training like the cyber defense competition is important for students. With the billions of data breaches in the world, public cyber education and training helps reduce these breaches and protects society.
“We have breaches that access sensitive code that directs the pathways of rockets, planes and cars or impacts hospitals by exposing personal data and shutting down power to surgical equipment,” she says. “Training students in middle and high school will help feed employees into jobs. West Virginia could be a cyber security hub and expand our state’s profile and economy.”
Not only did the competition expose the students to careers, but it also showed young adults that technology is more than entertainment.
“It was amazing coaching and watching these kids discover a world of computing that goes past games and documents,” says Monday. “I don’t think any of them will look at computers or the internet the same after this experience.”
Marshall University’s Women in Cyber
The mission of WInC is to help bridge the gender gap in technology both on and off campus by providing tech education, networking, leadership development and community outreach opportunities for females of all ages.
“My hope for this group is not only to empower female students here on campus but to empower the younger generation of females to go into technology fields,” says Chelsie Cooper, an alumna of Marshall’s digital forensics and information assurance group and WInC’s advisor. “Nothing is more powerful than a group of females advocating for something they are passionate about.”
Cooper joins John Sammons, director of Marshall’s digital forensics and information assurance program; Morganne Hutchinson, the first WInC president; and Stacy Cossin, the vice president, in leading the recently formed group.
“Women in Cyber was just formed in the spring 2019 semester, so we’re still very much in the early stages,” says Sammons. “One of the challenges is just getting the word out to the female students here at the university. They’ve done an excellent job with the limited amount of time they had. We plan to begin recruiting again as soon as school starts in the fall.”
Together, the group’s leaders aim to increase the number of females in cyber security jobs. So far there are 10 students in the group.
“Women are woefully underrepresented in the technology workforce,” says Sammons. “One recent survey put that number at around 24 percent. Our objective with this group is to do our part to increase that number, and my hope is this group will have an impact well beyond our program and university.”
He also wants to make sure females realize a career in this field is within reach and that women do very well in this course of study at Marshall. In addition, the group is determined to serve as a support system for women in technology programs, helping boost their confidence while recruiting more females to careers in the cyber and tech world.
“My goal for this group is to make sure that no woman in this group will ever feel left behind or that she’s not represented,” says Cossin. “It has been said that you can’t be what you can’t see, and I am determined to make us be seen.”
Together, WInC and MLA have one goal that unites them in their technology efforts: they both want to see West Virginia benefit from the students, training and work.
“There is a tremendous effort to bring cyber security jobs to West Virginia,” says Sammons. “In order for the effort to be successful, we must produce the quality workforce that can fill these new positions. We need all hands on deck to make that vision a reality.”
For the πthons team, the middle school students plan to return to the competition next year. With continued participation, their preparation for technology-based jobs will only continue.
“With a projected 80,000 jobs available in the cyber security field by 2020, the skills learned through the National Youth Cyber Education Program will allow young men and women to better prepare to fill this critical professional need,” says Mohammed.
