October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and to cyber security students at the University of North Georgia, it means putting the skills they are learning to work.
The job market they are training for is not just used all over the world, but also in their hometowns.
Ash Mady, Department Head of Computer Science & Information Systems at UNG, said local companies face a global problem: losing business, both money and customers, to cyber security breaches.
"You may be able to recover from financial loss, but the loss of reputation is very difficult to bounce back from. When consumers lose trust, when they're afraid about their life savings, their private information, they'll go somewhere else."
"All organizations are realizing this, and that is why there is a growing need to even understand, 'what is that?' 'how is it happening?' and 'how can we deal with this?' 'what should be done?' and this is where we come in, whether by education through the Cyber Security Center, train people, engage with organizations, through research or through academics."
Mady said the booming sector has room for more.
"There are way more openings and job needs than what we can supply with this program. Actually, if every university in the system had a similar program, we still wouldn't have equal to the supply of the growing demand and these job offers, whether here in the state of Georgia, or in the United States or even globally."
Despite being midway through their first semester of the program, cyber security students at UNG have had ample opportunities to tackle the things they're studying head on, like at competitions.
"Participants will go through real scenarios. And they'll be surprised by what's happening, they'll be put under stress, under pressure, there will be unstructured paths for them to deal with, and this is exactly what happens in the work place."
Mady said the UNG students are currently holding the number two spot in the U.S. in the Codebreakers Challenge, which is sponsored by the NSA, and they also hosted the Atlanta Cyber Challenge last week.
Students are learning both the technical skills and learned behaviors that will help them efficiently solve problems. But, Mady said cyber security isn't only an IT problem any more. "It's not only the technical solutions to protect the parameter of the organization, but also we're training the internal employees, the insiders to the organization, to be part of the solution."
