IEEE Spectrum June, 2014 - 26

resources_educaTIon

DefenSe aGaInSt the
DaRk aRtS (of cYbeRSPace)
universities are offerinG
Graduate deGrees in
cybersecurity

n an increasingly networked

world, security attacks have
become not just more frequent and sophisticated but also more financially damaging. The
silver lining is the growing need for cybersecurity experts. Information security analyst
jobs are expected to grow by 37 percent by
2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics. "Every time there's a new breach anywhere, a light goes on in some C-suite office and
it opens up hiring," says Ernest McDuffie, who
leads the National Initiative for Cybersecurity
Education (NICE) at the U.S. National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
Consequently, more and more institutions
now offer specialized master's degrees in
cybersecurity. Big names like IBM and Intel
are collaborating with schools to keep security
curricula up to date. "Today many companies are
educating their workforce on their own," says
Marisa Viveros, vice president of IBM's Cybersecurity Innovation Program. "But we also need
universities to take that in a formal, programmatic manner and teach principles and fundamentals." The NICE initiative, meanwhile, hopes
to improve awareness and education and lists
over 180 higher-education facilities as cybersecurity centers of academic excellence.
Previously, a computer science degree, onthe-job training, or even self-taught hacking skills
had been enough to qualify someone for a security position. But cybersecurity has expanded
enough in depth and scope in the past decade
to warrant its own degree, says Gene Spafford,
executive director of Purdue University's Cen26

Jun 2014

norTH aMerIcan

ter for Education and Research in Information
Assurance and Safety. "Ten years ago, somebody
involved in security would be doing data acquisition and response. Now...somebody involved in
security has to be doing risk analysis and threat
evaluation. They need to know law enforcement
and forensics, planning and policy."
Purdue's cybersecurity program produces
more graduates every year, and they steadily
find employment, Spafford says. Master's students get five-plus offers, while Ph.D.s get two
to three apiece. Spafford feels this level of demand will hold up, at least for now: "One recent
report says that the average starting salary for
hires in the D.C. area is around US $116 000 a
year. If there was an oversupply, that would not
be the case."
Cybersecurity master's students take basic
computer science courses, but two-thirds of their
curriculum covers specialized areas such as network security, cryptography, data forensics, and
policy, says Wenke Lee, director of the Georgia
Tech Information Security Center. Hands-on lab
courses and real-world projects defined by outside organizations or companies round out the
education. This in-depth training is crucial to becoming a security specialist, says Lee.

sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

Outside the United States, IBM has partnered with more than 200 universities around
the world to equip students with security skills.
Registered faculty at these institutes can access
an IBM-developed curriculum and software
portfolio online. Viveros says she had been
astonished to find that before the IBM program,
some schools in countries such as Poland and
Mexico had never heard of the topic.
Indeed, the biggest challenge academic programs face might be getting enough interest.
A survey by defense company Raytheon found
that less than one-quarter of young adults in the
United States believed a cybersecurity career is
interesting at all.
One solution is to simply get the career on
students' radar, says Sukumaran Nair, chair of
the computer science and engineering department at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas.
In the Raytheon survey, 82 percent of respondents say that no high school teacher or guidance counselor ever mentioned the idea of a
career in cybersecurity. "Once it's clear to fresh
grads from high school that this area will guarantee jobs, it's very likely that they'll choose this
line of education," Nair says. "Universities are
well prepared to train them." -pRaCHI paTel
IlluSTRaTIon By

Jesse lefkowitz

http://sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2014