Forsyth Tech is forging a name for itself in the cybersecurity arena as a recipient of the prestigious Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Defense Education designation from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The college’s Davis iTEC Center, under the leadership of Dr. Deanne Wesley, department chair, held a cybersecurity symposium on Main Campus April 22, 2016. Experts addressed faculty, students and the public about education and research in the field.
Lynne Clark, chief of the National Information Assurance Education and Training Program, a joint initiative of the NSA and DHS’s National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense, spoke about her agency’s role in fostering cybersecurity education.
The agency encourages community colleges to form partnerships with four-year institutions to collaborate on research. She spoke of the need for colleges to provide ways for students and employees in the field to further their cybersecurity education. And she emphasized the need for qualified teachers to meet the exploding demand for cybersecurity jobs.
North Carolina’s top cybersecurity officer, Chip Moore, Chief Information Security Office, Department of Information Technology, explained the state’s track record in warding off cyberattacks on government, corporate and educational computer systems.
The final speaker, James Brown, Ph.D., a cybersecurity researcher at North Carolina A&T University, spoke about the university’s Center for Advanced Studies in Identity Sciences (CASIS), one of two cybersecurity labs researching facial recognition, biometrics, identity modeling, and other topics. Forsyth Tech has a partnership with A&T to work on joint projects.
The symposium ended with a panel of national, state and local cybersecurity experts answering questions about topics such as why accreditations make students more marketable among employers.
