READING, Pa. — Companies and organizations around the world have a growing need for well-trained, qualified cybersecurity professionals. The cost of cybercrime is estimated to reach $6 trillion a year by 2021 according to Cybersecurity Ventures, with hackers hitting high-profile targets such as Equifax, Target and the FBI.
Penn State Berks will begin offering a bachelor of science degree program in cybersecurity analytics and operations in the fall semester of 2019.
The Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations Degree Program (CYAOP) will help prepare students to protect digital information from attack, through cyber defense strategies. Students will learn to analyze security issues from the perspective of human and information systems and how to anticipate and identify threats through the mastery of technology, articulate potential impacts to stakeholders, and ensure the safety of online information.
The program educates students on the essential concepts of cyber defense and the analytical fundamentals of cybersecurity, with a focus on techniques and strategies for ensuring the safety of online information stored in large and heterogeneous networks that are embedded within and across the complex infrastructures that are pervasive in today's business, government and military organizations.
CYAOP graduates will be prepared to join the rapidly growing cybersecurity workforce deployed across organizations of diverse sizes and missions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, the median annual salary for information security analysts was $98,350 in May 2018. In addition, employment of information security analysts is projected to grow 28 percent through 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations.
The CYAOP major is an interdisciplinary program, drawing from concepts and skills associated with information science, management science, statistics and data science, human behavior, and law and policy. All CYAOP students are required to complete an internship in the field, allowing them to apply what is learned in the classroom to a real-world situation. Students also will have the opportunity to conduct research with faculty members, where they investigate important issues related to cybersecurity.
For more information on the Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations degree program, contact Program Coordinator Tricia Clark, Instructor in Information Sciences and Technology, at 610-396-6349 or via email at TKC3@psu.edu.