Southeast Mo. State brings first cybersecurity camp to Cape Central High School
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - A Senate report this week called out several federal agencies for their lack of cybersecurity.
That’s just one reason why the head of the cybersecurity program at Southeast Missouri State University says degrees in the field are in high demand.
”It’s obvious there are hacking attacks every day,” said Dr. Mario Garcia.
Garcia heads up SEMO’s new Cybersecurity program.
“We need to have more professionals preparing in this area and the way to do it is to start from middle school high school and then college so that we can meet the demand of the industry,” he said.
That’s why Garcia hosted more than a dozen Cape Central High School students for the department’s first cybersecurity camp.
”I wanted to be a part of this camp because I am interested in majoring in cybersecurity and I don’t know a whole lot about it and this was an excellent opportunity to try and experiment and see what different aspects of the field I can do,” said senior Olivia Garagnai.
“They were really able to get our attention with a lot of the classes and a lot of the discussions and they were really able to bring it down to kind of a high school level and then ramp it up to a college level,” said senior Nick Stones.
Garcia said cybersecurity is a fast-moving field that is steadily changing as hackers find new ways to get at your personal information.
“We can prevent that with teaching with knowledge, with activities like this with students learning how the hackers operate, how they attack so they can then prevent this from happening,” Garcia said.
And as this week-long camp wraps up, he said he’s still got plenty to learn.
“So, we as professionals need to keep learning methodologies, new tools, new technology, preparing new material to teach our students,” Garcia said.
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