By: Dr. Matt Plass Assistant Professor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Having been a cybersecurity practitioner for over twenty years the one thing that I learned about my own ability to advance in the career or skillsets to look for in hiring candidates into my organizations was practical hands-on skills. Now, as a cybersecurity faculty member, the challenge that I have is passing on those critical hands-on skills to my students. The Community Engaged Learning (CEL) program here at Lewis University allows faculty to accomplish this ever changing and sometimes challenging issue. This fall I was relocated from the College of Business’s Information Security Management program to the College of Aviation, Science and Technology’s new Cybersecurity and Information Technology program. With this move I was also given the opportunity to facilitate the Computer Infrastructure Capstone course, for those not familiar with this course the goal is for students to work in teams in the design, implementation and testing of a medium to-large networked computer system. The integral piece to this capstone course is faculty work with CEL to enlist organizations who are willing to have our students utilize what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to their real-world organization. This semester CEL was able to line up two great outside organizations for the students to work with, Phillips Flowers and the National Hookup of Black Women (NHBW). Our engagement with Phillips Flowers (Phillips) is giving one student group the ability to conduct a security, vulnerability and risk assessment of the entire Phillips organization. The students are working with Phillips managers, engineers and technical staff to determine potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses to their physical, system and network infrastructure. The student team has also been tasked with conducting a penetration test on Phillips’ network to ensure that no one from outside the Phillips organization can access critical systems and networks. Once the student team completes its assessment, they will prepare a report which will be presented to Philips with recommendations on how to improve their overall security posture. The second engagement presented to the students this semester is with the National Hookup of Black Woman (NHBW). Here the student team has been given the task of preparing new network segments for their facility utilizing a large donated cache of laptops. The NHBW has requested the student team to verify that the laptops work, are updated and secure. Once completing this task, the student team will network these laptops into the existing NHBW network. From here these new laptops can interface with the NHBW’s wireless network, printers and scanners. These laptops are also being divided across multiple classrooms to be used by children and teenagers with which NHBW works. The student team therefore needs to ensure that proper firewall settings are configured to filter out any inappropriate content that might be accessible from the internet. The student team also needs to ensure that the laptops can print to the printers located within each classroom. The student team will conclude the project by writing up the undertaking in a formal report that will be presented to the head of the NHBW at the end of the semester. It is with opportunities like these that our students will not only apply what they are learning in the classroom but will have the opportunity to build on teamwork and communications skills which are critical skills necessary for anyone in technology. I am excited to see how these projects conclude and look forward to additional opportunities this spring as I continue working with this capstone course. The CEL program is adding some of the most sought after skills to our students’ resumes hands-on experience. Additionally, these experiences are providing community members with solid examples of how capable Lewis student are and, perhaps they may consider hiring opportunity them in the future!