According to the institute's director Edward Vasko, the partnership will give the institute access to technologies such as Sophos’ endpoint security tools, as well as anti-malware and anti-ransomware software, in order to provide on-the-job training to cybersecurity students in Boise State’s Cyberdome program that enlists students to help reduce cyber threats to rural communities. He noted that the partnership builds upon the Cyberdome’s other industry relationships, such as one announced in 2022 with Stellar Cyber, who provided the university with its Open XDR platform, a tool that integrates with a network's existing security technologies and combines their capabilities.
“What we've been able to do [at Boise] is meld together the workforce development needs that our state and the country need and provide service to an underserved and rural community base. Those rural communities can't attract and retain the necessary cybersecurity staff to maintain their cybersecurity programs,” he said of the Cyberdome program, which began in 2021. “Sophos believes in what we're doing from a workforce development perspective, meaning that we need to produce a better, ready-to-work student, and they also believe in the fact that underserved and rural communities are really the weakest link in our chain nationally right now.”
Vasko said that in his previous experience founding IT security companies like Avertium and Terra Verde, he noticed it was a challenge to find qualified applicants who were ready to enter the workforce without additional training. He said the Cyberdome’s partnerships with companies like Sophos aim to solve that workforce development problem, while securing some of the state’s most vulnerable networks.
“We kept running into a challenge, which was that we would hire terrific students, but they had never really been exposed to the real-world needs that cybersecurity programs and cybersecurity vendors need to have from their workers,” he said of his experience in the private sector.
Vasko said students will use tools provided by Sophos to monitor client assets, detect threats and report issues to clients such as rural K-12 districts in Idaho with limited cybersecurity resources, as well as municipalities to help secure their election systems. He said since the program was launched, Cyberdome students have notified clients about hundreds of potential cyber attacks, and the addition of Sophos’ tools will strengthen their ability to protect networks and analyze data about network vulnerabilities.
“Sophos really is key and critical to helping support the state and supporting our students, and ultimately, our employer partners that our students go to work for,” he said.
