State Farm has been a major supporter of the program. Representatives from the company joined ISU during an open house Monday to celebrate the growth of the program and its renovated space in Julian Hall.
“This is an amazing learning space that’s going to be home for an increasingly popular and in-demand major,” ISU President Terri Goss Kinzy said.
State Farm’s support has been key to the program’s development. Students started learning cybersecurity at ISU in 2007 as part of a sequence within the wider computer science program. In 2016, the university made it a separate major, and State Farm donated $3 million the following year to support the program and create an endowed chair position.
Graduates enjoy plenty of job prospects, said Jesse Magenheimer, vice president and chief information security officer at State Farm. There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs in cybersecurity in the United States, he said.
“The staffing needs in this space is immense,” he said.
Those impacted by cybersecurity threats include schools themselves. Heartland Community College was hit by a cyber attack in late 2020 and has dedicated $1 million to improving cybersecurity. A ransomware attack left Lincoln College unable to access critical functions, contributing to the school’s closure in May. Schools have become increasingly common targets of cyberattacks and have made their own investments in return.
State Farm’s investment in the department has helped ISU teach future leaders in the field, Kinzy said.
“We want them to be the future leaders of the cybersecurity industry in this country and the world,” she said.
The connection to business exists at the academic level too, said Traci Carte, director of the School of Information Technology, which houses the program. Students take courses outside what might be normally thought of as IT, she said.
“It speaks to IT majors in a different way (...),” she said. “It also has a social aspect.”
Students need to be able to navigate not just the technical side of threats but also the social side of events like phishing attempts. While many computer science students go on to jobs in cybersecurity, a dedicated program like ISU’s helps give students a leg up.
“Somebody with a cybersecurity degree is going to get up to running faster,” she said.
The program is housed in Julian Hall, largely in the ground floor in space that used to be a parking garage. Work on the cybersecurity sections wrapped up last year, but other parts of the space were still being worked on to hold people displaced during the renovation of the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts.
The cybersecurity facilities include two collaborative rooms, with tables, computers and TV screens to allow students and others to work together on projects. There are also three classrooms, with moveable walls that can be moved to make it all a single room.
Many students come in knowing about computer science and the potential job opportunities it has but more and more students are interested in cybersecurity specifically, Carte said. It is something that impacts everyone and that people are increasingly aware of.
“The Internet has touched all our lives,” Carte said.
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