How Dakota State University looks to lead on growing the cyber workforce

Secure facilities and other labs that are used to test defenses against some of the nation’s biggest cybersecurity threats might typically be found in Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley. But a Midwestern university has that and more, and is using them to train the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.

Dakota State University’s campus in Madison, South Dakota has a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which allows academics and students to be at the forefront of cybersecurity research. And there is more to follow, as next year the university plans to open its Applied Research Lab, a multimillion dollar facility funded in part by philanthropist Denny Sanford as well as state funds.

It's all part of the plan to keep the university at the forefront of preparing the next generation of cybersecurity workers and to do so outside of traditional technology hubs, especially as there are still hundreds of thousands of open cybersecurity jobs in the public and private sectors. Attracting even more cyber professionals to the Midwest to learn and research is a big selling point, DSU President Jose-Marie Griffiths said.

“The idea is we can now expand and have a small applied cyber research industry in the state,” Griffiths told Route Fifty in a recent interview. “If we put that expertise there, then it will start to attract people, sort of like the [North Carolina] Research Triangle Park and Silicon Valley and all those places on a small scale. For our environment, where the largest city is 230,000 people, this is a big deal. When I went to South Dakota, we were losing our best talent to the coasts. I have a picture; it's a map of where all the jobs were when I came in, and they're literally all around the edges. There's absolutely nothing in the middle of the country.”

Dakota State has already long established itself as a cybersecurity training and research powerhouse. It is one of only 11 universities to hold all three Center of Academic Excellence designations from the National Security Agency for cyber defense, offense and research, and offers various degrees in the subject, including a PhD in Cyber Operations.

Griffiths, who has been the university’s president since 2015, said that stems from the 1980s when the then-governor declared it would be a hub for computer science after Citibank put a regional headquarters in nearby Sioux Falls and needed mainframe programmers. The university’s interest in cybersecurity ramped up in the early 2000s.

Now, students participate in simulation demonstrations for various cyber incidents, not just those faced by the state and the local governments in South Dakota but also businesses. They also have access to a virtual computing lab, where academics can create virtual machines with all manner of vulnerabilities and bugs and have students learn how to deal with those problems, as well as how to defend and attack systems.

The campus also contains a digital forensics lab for use by state and local law enforcement as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, although students cannot handle live evidence. An on-campus security operations center, which Griffiths said may soon provide monitoring and threat response services to local governments, also gives students real-time experience. Campus-based SOCs are growing in use and importance, not just to provide cybersecurity services but also workforce training for students.

Griffiths said graduates are ready to work on day one, even at agencies that handle some of the most complex cybersecurity and national security cases.

“It's a hands-on, very applied, very practical experience,” she said. “Our students get the theory, but then they're able to put it into practice immediately, while they're still in school. And that's what gives them the edge, I think, when they go out the workplace.”

This year has been marked by uncertainty about the future role of the federal government in cybersecurity, including how much it will continue to work with state and local governments on threat-sharing and intelligence. There also have been broader questions about the future of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, especially amid employee layoffs and reassignments. Griffiths said CISA’s mission has “got a little diffuse,” and it is “hard for people to explain exactly what they do with all these pieces.”

But given the threats governments at all levels face, she said there will always be a public-sector role for cybersecurity protections. That will be especially important as artificial intelligence and quantum change the threat landscape even further.

“I don't know that you want to eliminate [CISA],” Griffiths said. “[I] don't believe [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem’s intent was to close it down, but I don't know that she has the people at the moment that really, she needs to get them rebuilt and reset… There is a lot of fear, and so people are nervous. And so, it's an interesting time in the industry, and people are saying, you know, are there going to be jobs? Well yes, somebody's got to do it. And how, I'm not sure.”