Traditionally (if one can speak of tradition in an industry that changes almost daily), cybersecurity education has been the purview of tech school, MOOCs, coding camps, and on-the-job training. It isn’t the sort of subject you study in grad school. But that may be changing.
Joe Scherrer, Director of the Cybersecurity Strategic Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that tech schools and undergraduate programs are limited and that the future of cybersecurity will increasingly rely on professionals with graduate cybersecurity degrees. Furthermore, Scherrer writes that graduate programs need to transition away from the usual approach that combines managerial with technical training and elevate cybersecurity to a standalone engineering discipline.
Scherrer, who is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, also recommends that universities:
- listen to what industry needs before developing their cybersecurity master’s and PhD programs;
- provide the educational environment to foster interest from undergraduate students earlier in their course of study;
- find creative ways to recruit faculty with expertise in cybersecurity;
- improve cybersecurity laboratory capabilities; and
- establish talent pipelines to corporate and government organizations that offer positions for high-quality cybersecurity talent.
Of course, for graduate programs in cubersecurity to succeed, they need to convince students that the investment, in time and money, makes both career and financial sense. That’s not an easy sell, when undergraduates with cybersecurity skills are already being offered six figure salaries.
To learn more about cybersecurity education, visit these websites: