WSU joins battle against hacking with new training

School offering new post-graduate training programs.

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer 12:12 AM Monday, September 19, 2011

Stolen credit card numbers. Compromised software. Hardware ridden with trap doors.

Wright State University’s Institute of Defense Studies and Education (IDSE) is joining the fight for cyber security with new post-graduate training programs in 2012.

The institute will offer a six-month “cyber security” certificate and a yearlong post graduate program starting in January. Sixty students — graduate students or professionals with roles in information and computer security — will be chosen for a program that will blend online study with limited weekend residency periods at Wright State.

Also, Wright State’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and School of Professional Psychology are developing a master’s degree program in cyber security.

The battle against hacking requires training, said Vikram Sethi, IDSE director.

“These people (hackers) are smart, and they’re getting more aggressive and they have more ways to attack than they have ever had in the past,” Sethi said. “That is scary.”

Recently, software firm McAfee identified “Operation Shady Rat” as a five-year intrusion against dozens of companies as well as federal and state governments.

Concerns today encompass not just creating and testing secure software, but hardware.

Sethi noted that most computer hardware is manufactured outside the U.S., and American intellectual property — which often resides on U.S. computers — has long been a target.

Courses will include management of computer systems, cryptography and forensics, the psychology of risk and terrorism and more. Prospective students can go to the institute’s website, www.wright.edu/idse.

Security Innovation, a Boston-area firm, is helping shape the curriculum. Ed Adams, SI president and chief executive, said the IDSE program is unique, with only “a handful” of other universities offering anything similar but nothing nearly as comprehensive.

The biggest problem today is that universities don’t teach how to write secure code, Adams said. They teach how to write quickly and affordably, but not securely, and he believes employers need professionals with expertise in security.

“No industry or individual is immune (to the problem of hacking) right now,” he said.

Any graduate student or professional in a computer science or software engineering can look at this as an opportunity for further training, Adams and Sethi said. Students will need to understand how to write software.

“It’s doing what I think a lot of other universities should be doing,” Adams said of Wright State.

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