A new cybersecurity major was launched in the College of Arts and Sciences in fall 2023, and has since evolved to include prospective students and students in the job market.
Computer Science Department Head Reza Rejaie co-proposed the CAS cybersecurity major with professors Jun Li and Joe Li when they saw a lack of targeted training for cybersecurity in the education system.
“There are a lot of folks who get a degree in other fields and have cybersecurity knowledge or learning and they can do things,” Rejaie said. “But training people directly for cybersecurity-related jobs and skills has not been a major activity in many institutions.”
According to Rejaie, the demand for professionals with cybersecurity training has increased immensely with the boom of digital technology.
There are several thousand cybersecurity position openings in Oregon and hundreds of thousands across the U.S., according to Rejaie.
“There is a huge demand for cybersecurity channels at different levels and we created this program in order to respond to that need because if that need is not addressed, we are all exposed,” Rejaie said. “You know everyone who uses these cyber systems is exposed.”
Chief Security Information Officer José Dominguez had checked cyberseek.org, a site for cybersecurity jobs, and saw a great deal of positions in Eugene.
“Just the other day, I was checking and there were about 500 jobs around Eugene,” Dominguez said. “So the idea is we have a deficit of cybersecurity practitioners. So the expectation is that increasing our workforce will help alleviate some of the challenges that many of our institutions are having when it comes to cybersecurity attacks.”
As the Internet and cyberspace have grown, the risk and magnitude of cyber attackers have grown, as well, Rejaie said.
“As the attackers become more and more active and more and more sophisticated, their ability to go and compromise more entities grows,” Rejaie said. “But with that, the sophistication of their attacks also grow.”
According to Dominguez, cyberattacks are increasing nationwide, and higher education institutions like UO are among the targets.
“The reality is that there’s been an increase in cybersecurity attacks overall,” Dominguez said. “Higher education is not immune to cybersecurity attacks, and in fact, it tends to be considered an easy target.”
UO currently has positions in place with the Cybersecurity Operations Center to give students a sense of professional practice while still in university, Dominguez said.
UO and CAS’ cybersecurity major differs from other institutions in that it is based on computer science competency and is balanced between theoretical foundation and hands-on skills, according to Rejaie.
“We don’t want to have somebody who has the core knowledge but cannot touch anything because they just know concepts,” Rejaie said. “So it has to be balanced.”
According to Rejaie, the National Security Agency has a set of guidelines and skill sets that are required for a career, and CAS’ major covers all of those guidelines which some institutions do not normally do.
Rejaie said that the most exciting part of the cybersecurity major is the experiential learning component through their model, “Teaching Hospitals.”
“We are in the process of creating a security operation center within the university called the Training Security Operations Center,” Rejaie said. “So this is an operation center that monitors entities outside the school. So for example, it may monitor a school district, a city, a county [or] a tribe.”
According to Rejaie, the teaching component comes through the Teaching Security Operations Center where students will go through the program and spend one or two terms working at the center.
“So if you work in the center for one term, you end up spending 100 to 120 hours at multiple shifts to come to the center and work on different functions,” Rejaie said. “So you work on this particular client and this particular function for a couple of weeks then you change to a different function.”
This TSOC training technique will allow students to work in different fields in cybersecurity rather than just one focus, according to Rejaie.
TSOC will likely be operational by early fall 2024, Rejaie said.
Another new component of the program is an industry partnership and mentorship experience, according to Rejaie.
“We want industry professionals to come and mentor students regularly. We are creating a community of cybersecurity students that have their own space in the department,” Rejaie said. “They have access to computers and servers that they can break things, they can make things, they can create an attack and they can basically explore in a sandbox within the department to improve their skills.”
A designated faculty member will also be mentoring students and preparing them for competitions for this hands-on approach, Rejaie said.
According to Rejaie, the funding for the bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, certificate degree and improvement and expansion are through the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a joint center with UO, Portland State University and Oregon State University to combat cyber threats.
“The initial design and development of the degree happened before the state funding,” Rejaie said. “But when the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence was established, we were given some funds to expand.”
According to Rejaie and Dominguez, they are both hopeful for the future and growth of the cybersecurity industry and major at UO.
“There’s an opportunity for us here to really contribute to the development of workforce and talent in the country,” Dominguez said. “And that is culminating with the creation of the program, so we’re very excited to do that.”
