Message From Leadership

Morgan Zantua, Center for Cybersecurity Innovation Program Director

morgan zantua

STC Kicked-Off the Spring Quarter with a Bang!

This past Monday, CityU proudly hosted the NICE Local Stakeholder’s Pre-Conference event in advance of the June 5-7th NICE Conference at the Westin Hotel. Over 58 representatives from industry, government, and military and representatives from academia came together to discuss the hiring needs, challenges, and opportunities faced by businesses. A panel of five, Tina Romeo, Microsoft, Katie Geraghty, Boeing, John Yeoh, Cloud Security, MAJ Sameer Puri, Washington National Guard, and Dr. Zoe Fowler, Norwich University, shared personal and professional insights. The full panel conversation is available here. I encourage every student and the entire CityU community to listen to what these industry experts are saying.

I listened, and here are a few observations:

CityU’s STC is leading the way integrating cloud technology into our courses. A decade ago, the viability of cloud technology was being debated. Experts questioned if this thing called “cloud computing” would last. Today, it’s which cloud provide does your company use. Seattle, Washington contains several cloud providers including Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google Cloud. In addition, there is also an active Seattle chapter for the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). Please note, STC is integrating cloud platforms into our courses. “Professional Skills” were in-demand by employers. Team projects, a consistent activity in STC courses, are not always popular. It’s challenging to work on team projects, but, it simulates reality. At STC your grade is heavily dependent upon your team project. On-the-job, your job viability and upward mobility depends heavily upon your collaboration and communication skills.

CityU is attuned to market demands of a workforce in transition. The panel pointed out seasoned workers are re-training and entering cybersecurity. Forty-five percent of STC’s MSCY students are over forty years old, while fifty percent of students are between the ages of thirty to thirty-nine. CityU continues to be aligned with finding cybersecurity and technology talent.

Rather than summarize the entire 90-minute panel, invest your time and hear about the challenges and opportunities and possible solutions awaiting you.

Note: June 5th – 7th the NICE Conference organizers need students to assist with staffing the registration and customer service desk. Student volunteers from CityU are requested. While volunteers will work, they will also be given the opportunity to select key sessions of interest to attend. While I don’t have a formal process in place yet, if you are interested send your up-to-date resume to:

C4CYI@cityu.edu. SUBJECT: Student Volunteer for NICE.

Presently, we recommend local students consider applying as no dormitory rooms are presently available for this conference.

The City University of Seattle Team hosted the NICE Pre-Conference Local Stakeholder’s event: a prelude to Setting Expectations for the Cybersecurity Workforce.

View the panel presentation: NICE Local Stakeholders’ Conference on Vimeo

Announcements

Mark Your Calendars

Looking for more project/work experience to put on your resume? Try contributing to an open-source project:

GitHub for beginner-friendly open-source projects

How to Contribute to Open-Source Projects – guide

STC TA documentation for setting up environments

 


Valuable certifications:

Computer Science 

AZ-900 

cloud – practitioner 

 


Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Information Systems 

AWS 

CISA 

Cisco Certifications 

CompTIA Certifications  

 


Data Science and Artificial Intelligence 

AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty  

Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate 

Google Cloud Certified – Professional Data Engineer 

 


Looking for extra help to guide you through your tech career? Check out Mentors in Tech

Student Tip of the Week: Start looking for internships at least 6 months prior to graduation, many internship opportunity require students have at least 6 months left on their study program to apply.

Recognitions

Congratulations to our students for their participation in the NCL Individual Game.

Andrew Cook

The NCL games are quite an eye-opener for me. In equal amounts, I learned how exciting it can be and how much more practice / research I need!

Portrait of Christa
Christa Darrin

“This is my second time participating, and I’ve seen a huge improvement on my cybersecurity skills. I started from knowing nothing, to seeing a huge improvement!

I would like to thank my team for giving me may helpful resources in preparation for the competition!”

Dan Montague

“NCL is always a humbling experience. The individual game this season was a mixture of familiar and novel challenges. Because I’ve participated previously, this was a great way to see how my competencies have developed over time. I’m looking forward to pushing my completion significantly higher in later seasons.”

Thaddeus Thomas

I would highly recommend the NCL Individual Competition to anyone who is interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity. It is a great way to gain practical experience, develop your skills, and network with other cybersecurity professionals.

The networking part is legit too! Discord has a lot of active participation!

Opportunities

Scholarship Opportunities

Become a Cybersecurity High School Teacher– open to high school teachers in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington state: Online with a four day in-person summer summit in Seattle.

Learn more.

AWS Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Scholarship Program

The AWS Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Scholarship program, in collaboration with Intel and Udacity, aims to help underserved and underrepresented high school and college students learn foundational ML concepts to prepare them for careers in AI and ML. For more information click here.

Learn More.

Upcoming Events

Click here to view full calendar.

College Cloud Career Day

Experience a College Cloud Career Day together with Computing for All, Northeastern University, and City University of Seattle. At the AWS Skills Center in Seattle on April 12, 2023 from 10am – 2:30pm. 

This event is free and open to all college students. Save the date and reserve a spot here.

Bsides Seattle 2023
Bsides is a community based conference for individuals in or interested in Information Security. A place where security geeks of all ages, all levels of learning, all walks of life can bring their true selves and learn amazing things. For more information and to sign up click here.
 
When: Saturday, May 20, 2023 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM PST
Where: Building 92, 15010 NE 36th St, Redmond 98052, WA
Missed out on an Invited Talk or Tech Talk?

Check out the C4CYI YouTube Channel for STC recorded Invited Talks and events. Explore ACM Tech Talks and the ACM website to watch their free informative Tech Talks. ACM, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. You can find record CAE Tech talks here. For questions on CAE Tech Talk, please send them email.

STC Clubs

Interested in the Tech field? Wish to broaden your network? Check out our clubs.

Cybersecurity Enthusiasts are welcome to join!

Check out the Breach of the Week program; A club member presents current cyber events to the club in 3-5 minutes. This is a great opportunity to learn, participate and network.

We encourage all current and future alumni to attend the meetings.

Meeting Times: 

Fridays, 3:00PM (PDT) Over MS Teams

Contact:

President – Dan Montage

City University of Seattle has just created a new WiCyS student chapter.

The purpose of the club is to build a community within our CityU school that promotes women’s education, participation, and leadership in the field of cybersecurity.

Meeting Times: 

Next meeting: April 28th at 11:00AM (PDT). Feel free to reach out for more information.

Typical meeting time: Fridays, 11:00AM (PDT) over MS Teams.

Contact:

President – Melissa Lee

STC Tech Club

STC Tech Club meets to provide tech-related learning opportunities, skill development, and networking. Students or faculty who would like to share their expertise or project, please reach out.

Meeting Times: 

Thursdays, 4:30PM (PDT) Over MS Teams

Contact:

President – Tyray Fortune

This quarter, we will be covering various topics including Computer Vision, Data Engineering, and NLP! Take a look at our calendar and club page for more.

We are recruiting new officers for the Data Science Club. If you are interested in becoming one, please fill out the form here, or scan the QR code in the flyer.

Meeting Times: 

Wednesdays, 4:00PM (PDT) Over MS Teams

Contact:

President – Mahathi Vucha

Tech Humor

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