CCRI Cybersecurity Advisory Board Meeting - March 11, 2024
Attendees: Patrick Colantonio, Molly Magee, Mike Steinmetz, Jenna Matisewski, Mike Kelly, Kevin Crawford, Liz Del Sesto, Donna Scattone
Meeting began at 1:00 pm
Mike welcomed everyone and each person introduced themselves.
Mike is on 2 committees, CoP (Community of Practice) and Community Outreach Committee.
Mike explained the PoS recertification was awarded last March, and the CAE designation was awarded to us last October for 5 years. He explained how the CAE portion is professional development for faculty, student opportunities, and community outreach. He said the NSA is now an annual report even though we have a 5-year accreditation. The annual report looks for retention rates, the number of students in the program, graduation rates, and any additional support for the program. He said we must concentrate on activities for this year's annual report. He talked about other colleges, how many people their activities reach out to, and that they are doing great things such as podcasts, weekly radio shows, etc.
Mike S suggested teaming up with Doug White’s podcast to reach out to recent graduates who can provide feedback. He said resilience is a huge topic, and through internships, recent graduates who may be able to provide feedback for jobs and Cyber SN may have an interest in talking to you.
Mike announced our Cyber Night is May 1. This year he reached out to former graduates to see if they would be interested in doing something for that event. Patrick also suggested using LinkedIn to find graduates.
Mike explained the recent program changes. They changed the Program Language Elective to Ethical Hacking. We also replaced Programming Concepts with Scripting for System Administration. Also, the capstone was the driver for the scripting course because the feedback from internships is they needed to learn more of that for the jobs. Kevin talked about the Digital Forensics course; we are now partnered with EC-Council.
Jenna said she was trained by URI. She wanted to reach out to us to help her students with interests in Cybersecurity with more hands-on training.
The Cyber Club is doing well. We meet weekly with an average of 10 students. They just competed in the National Cyber League and finished 71/500. Mike said the Rogers HS and CCRI students come in every Saturday and collaborate. Mike said they purchased a game called Back Doors and Breeches. Students like it and talk about different scenarios during competitions and
how they handle these situations. The NCL spring season has started and there are two teams, one from CCRI and one from our P-Tech students from Rogers HS. This allows them to compete twice, once in high school and once as a CCRI student. There is also a team for the NCAE Cybergames.
The cyber range server was replaced last fall by Bylight and includes a LMS which will be upgraded this May. Mississippi State has the same range and is willing to share its development of a simulated workplace. We are going to see them in June so we can see theirs first and develop some of their ideas on our range and then have them come out to see our range.
Mike said that our Cyber Night is May 1. We have URI, Johnson & Wales University, SENEDIA, Career Services, Workforce, cyber club, cyber alumni, and the RI Computer Museum. On May 22nd, there will be our day event at the Newport Campus for High Schools.
Kevin said we have an articulation agreement with Capital Tech, and they will offer up to $12k in scholarships depending on credits and GPA. Faculty can get a 25% discount for graduate programs.
Liz talked about Bally’s donation to the college and that the STEM division is focusing on cybersecurity and some of our certificates.
Mike S suggested that Cyber Saturdays could be used to share topics and there is an ongoing need for cyber literacy. They could share one thing every month with the entire state. He asked if there were a lot of mid-career transfers into the program. Mike S said that the people who write coding, and script, is more common in the US, but there are specialized people in other countries who are dedicated individuals that write their own languages to stop hacking. There is a need in the US for individuals for Industrial Control Systems. He thought that through CCRI or P-Tech students some exposure to these industrial systems would be beneficial. Quantum computing is coming, and this should be on the to-do list.
Molly said you need a pipeline, and you could use something like Real Jobs RI and identify company needs. Patrick said plugging into companies and social media, alumni to communicate the need for cybersecurity careers. Also, use LinkedIn to find Alumni and where they are working.
The meeting ended at 2:36 pm.