Focusing on the importance of hands-on experience, the University of Oregon Security Club is giving students an opportunity to learn cybersecurity skills – skills that are in very high demand.
With cyber attacks becoming more prevalent and receiving more attention in recent years, Frank Arana, president of the club, says that the lack of focus on teaching security is “both a state and national problem.”
Arana says that Edward Snowden’s uncovering of government surveillance and recent cyber attacks on Sony and Target has highlighted security and brought it to the national spotlight. However, the amount of time that cybersecurity was ignored has been problematic for the state. According to a 2014 survey by the Technology Association of Oregon, there is a “serious cybersecurity skills gap in the state’s workforce” and is suffering from a moderate to a significant shortage of tech talent.
“The biggest issue with security is that a lot of people are intimidated by it and they just don’t get into it,” Arana said. “Now [people] are realizing that they need security people but no one really specializes in security.”
To combat this problem, the UO Security Club is teaching students skills to not only protect themselves but to provide practical skills they can use in security-related jobs.
Operations Director Holdon Oullette says that the group focuses on learning common offensive security attacks, such as cryptography and reverse engineering, through lectures on hands-on practice as a way to teach students about cyber security. By learning these tactics, the group becomes familiar with common attacks and helps them identify when an attack is happening to them.
“Learning about security in a more offensive way puts us more in the mindset that hackers would be in so we can help protect ourselves,” Oullette said.
In a computer science field that is typically self-taught, content Manager John Brodnax says that the UO Security Club helps bring people who would typically work by themselves to work together and learn from each other.
“We want to bring people to a more collaborative, open community,” Brodnax said.
At the university, there is only one course offered to students that is completely dedicated to computer security. Arana says that most schools, including the UO, mainly focus on theory-based teachings of cyber security rather than having students work with security directly like the club does. Although understanding the concepts involving computer science is important, Arana says that providing an opportunity to have students work with security hands-on is more practical.
Despite the limited courses, Oullette says that the university is one of the leaders in Oregon for security because, along with the club, Associate Professor Jun Li has been an integral part of pushing for increased offerings of security courses and is proposing to start a security-focused master’s program.
“We’re trying to catch up [in security] and I believe that here, at the UO, we’re spearheading this push for cybersecurity,” Oullette said.