Companies in Connecticut and around the country are working feverishly to fortify their defenses against malicious hackers and cyber attacks. But in doing so, they face a severe shortage of technology professional trained to confront the cyber menace. Ibrahim (Abe) Baggili, the Elder family endowed chair of computer science and cybersecurity at the University of […]
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Companies in Connecticut and around the country are working feverishly to fortify their defenses against malicious hackers and cyber attacks. But in doing so, they face a severe shortage of technology professional trained to confront the cyber menace. Ibrahim (Abe) Baggili, the Elder family endowed chair of computer science and cybersecurity at the University of New Haven, spearheads the university’s nationally recognized cyber forensics lab. Under his leadership, UNH’s cybersecurity program this year was awarded a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation and was designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations by the National Security Agency.
How would you characterize Connecticut’s preparedness against cyber attacks?
We need to invest heavily in creating a cybersecurity culture in Connecticut, which is yet to come. It needs to be a top priority across all business sectors. Many companies are not thinking about cybersecurity as much as they should be — or they’re only thinking about it once they’re attacked and it costs them a lot of money. There are many cities [in Connecticut] that have already been hit by cyber attacks — West Haven, Hamden — and I think the list is going to continue to grow.
UNH was one of the first colleges in the Northeast to launch a cybersecurity program in 2013. What kind of demand is the program generating?
We’ve had significant growth to the point where we’re building bigger classrooms just to be able to hold our student population — and we’re hiring more faculty, too. We’re kind of like a lean startup that has so much demand and we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do [to satisfy it]. I always tell students that if you’re interested, you need to apply very early.
Yet there still are 2,600 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in Connecticut. What else can be done?
We need to create a pipeline when people are young to get them interested. Our method and our approach is not only about the college program. We’re reaching out to students in high school. We’re trying to get high school students to think about cybersecurity as a career because the market demand is huge. There are expected to be 3.5 million job openings worldwide by 2021 and we don’t have enough [workers] to sustain it.
You’ve cautioned against schools rolling out new cybersecurity programs too precipitously. Why?
First, you have to hire the right faculty to teach these courses. You can’t develop a real cybersecurity program without having real cybersecurity professionals teaching the courses. And those people cost a lot of money, because you’re competing with industry [to hire and retain them]. My undergraduate students are starting at $100,000 a year. An assistant professor gets paid $80,000 to $90,000 a year. Universities embarking on this journey need to really get it in their heads that if you can’t pay the faculty enough money, you’re not going to have a great program.
