Marist College has opened its Security Operations Center, a hands-on classroom for its newly launched cybersecurity major.
Marist College placed itself among a small number of colleges in the northeast to offer cybersecurity as a major when it launched its program this fall.
The center, which opened Sept. 28 and is in the Hancock Center building, features a number of IBM”™s cybersecurity technologies, received in part through the Marist/IBM Joint Study Program.
“In our program we teach students how threats and attacks work and how to counteract them,” said Casimer DeCusatis, director of the school’s cybersecurity program and assistant professor of computer science. “In the SOC, students have an opportunity to practice their skills in a safe, isolated cloud environment that replicates real world scenarios such as the widely publicized security breaches at Equifax, Target and Sony.”
Marist received approval in June from the state Education Department to launch a bachelor of science in cybersecurity program. The program has its first class of students this fall.
In its announcement of the new center, Marist cited a recent study from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which found cybersecurity job postings grew 114 percent over a five-year period, with 86 percent of the positions requiring at least a bachelor’s of science degree.
