Emery Wainscott
News Editor
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The Board of Regents approved the Cyber Education and Research Center, which will emphasize cybersecurity and continue to provide education, research opportunities and outreach.

The Cyber Center will work in place of the Center for Computer and Information Technology. 

Director of the Cyber Center Michael Ramage said the decision is less of a replacement and more of a rebrand. 

Activities on current projects will not be stopped – for example, the Cyber Center will continue to work on research with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Rather, the Board of Regents’ approval reflects the Cyber Center’s emphasis on cybersecurity.

“There’s nothing that you do today that doesn’t have cybersecurity in it,” Ramage said. “Whether you’re programming, you’re doing networking, you’re a consumer, you’re on Facebook, [or] you’re on Zoom, all of these things have a … cyber component to it.”

The Cyber Center will continue doing recruitment and outreach for the computer science, computer information systems and cybersecurity programs.

Outreach includes high school students, community college students and all Murray State.

Ramage said he tries to talk with students about how and what the Cyber Center can do to help them explore their career opportunities. 

A main focus of the activities is to help students apply what they’re learning in the classroom to the real world.

“There are many majors right now where you have to go to where the jobs are,” Ramage said. “In … cybersecurity, especially right now, you can pick the city you want to live in, so [if] you want to live in Paducah, or you want to live in Nashville, or you want to live in Kansas City, you can move to that city, and there are going to be job opportunities available there.”

The Cyber Center’s accreditation from the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security was another reason for the rebrand.

The Murray State cybersecurity network management program became a Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, meaning that the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security have put their seal of approval on the content that Murray State is teaching.

“It helps with that accreditation or that designation, that cyber is in the name,” Ramage said. “That was going to allow us to better reflect that emphasis on cybersecurity, while at the same time being able to still promote our cybersecurity network management program, or our computer science program and our computer information systems program.”

Recently, the Cyber Center has participated in problem-solving research projects and competitions.

One research project they participated in revolved around GPS systems and how critical they are to global infrastructure.

Ramage said GPS stands for Global Positioning Satellite, and it provides the service of position, navigation and timing (PNT). 

“That PNT process is important to your cell service,” Ramage said. “It is important to the electricity that we use. It’s important for communications. It’s our critical infrastructure. It’s not just to help your phone tell you how to get home or to get to the place that you’re going.”

The project specifically worked on several questions proposed by the Center: What happens to wired infrastructure or wireless infrastructure if GPS fails? What happens to cell phones if GPS fails? What happens to the Internet? To telephone systems?

Ramage also said that GPS is an American implementation of PNT, and other countries have their own versions.

“We actually wrote a phone application that uses those different global navigation systems to compare which one’s more accurate, which one’s better,” Ramage said. “If [American] GPS wasn’t there, would we still be able to use one of these other ones to accomplish what we need to?”

Both undergraduate and graduate students in the program have participated in a national organization called Information Technology Education Research Association, known as ITERA. 

Every year, ITERA does a national case study competition, where participants are given a Request for Proposal, which presents a network or security problem for them to solve. The problems range from how to securely network seven sites together to redesigning network infrastructure for a school district and more.

Ramage said Murray State has won this competition more than any other university involved, and there’s only been one year the University wasn’t selected as a finalist.

“What that says is that our students are top [students],” Ramage said. “In these competitions, we compete against Ball State, we compete against Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M, University of Colorado at Boulder … literally schools from all over the country, and we’re always at the top.”

Ramage said the two skills employers most desire in students in this field are soft skills and problem-solving skills.

“This competition, actually, kind of proves the point that our students are really good at problem solving,” Ramage said. “The way that we teach is very hands-on, but not so vendor-specific that you only know that specific vendor. So if we bring you a problem, you can look at the big picture and be able to solve that, and our students are very good at it.”

Ramage said he hopes that the Cyber Center stays true to its name and provides the necessary educational and research opportunities for students.

More specifically, in five years, Ramage said he wants the Cyber Center to be held up as a leader in cybersecurity.

“I want people to know that they can come to the Murray State Cyber Center and be able to get the support that they need in cyber areas,” Ramage said. “For our region, for our state, we want to be that leader. So [if] that means … the Center continues to do research [and] provide education opportunities for our region, [then] absolutely.”

The next conference the Cyber Center will be participating in is their annual Security Matters Conference on April 21, which is the largest technology conference in the region.

“We’ll bring folks from all over the region in – high school students, college students, faculty, staff and industry professionals – and have speakers so that we can continue to provide that ongoing educational opportunity for those in our region,” Ramage said. “We want to continue that. We want our academic programs to be known as that place that can prepare you in this field. I think that we will be able to accomplish that goal. That in five years … we will be a leader in this space.”

For more information, visit murraystate.edu/cyber.