Pitt CyberCamp fosters interest in growing cybersecurity field

Source Domain: triblive.com

Khadija Hassan knows that with great power comes great responsibility with the skills she’s learning at the University of Pittsburgh’s CyberCamp.

“I’m interested in threat hunting,” said Hassan, a rising senior at Keystone Oaks High School. “You run different tasks to see if someone is trying to attack you. You check for people and investigate their digital footprint.”

Hassan, 17, of Castle Shannon, is one of 180 campers at this week’s Air Force Association CyberCamp, now in its 10th year. It’s held in Oakland and, this year for the first time, at Pitt’s Greensburg campus.

The free, weeklong camp teaches cybersecurity principles, ethics, skills and future career opportunities.

Since its inception, more than 1,400 students have completed the camp.

“Pittsburgh is doing a good job of recognizing that cybersecurity is a need,” said Beth Schwanke, executive director of Pitt’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security. “We also have education and training opportunities to fill it.”

Schwanke said that, while demand for the camp has remained consistently high, the students’ skill levels in technology and cybersecurity have increased. She attributes that to more area high schools offering cybersecurity programming.

“When we started 10 years ago, there wasn’t much cybersecurity being offered in schools,” Schwanke said. “The really exciting thing is that there are schools now teaching cybersecurity, and those kids are coming to camp and still learning new things.”

A June study from Cyber.org found that 41% of educators nationwide reported their students receive cybersecurity education — slightly lower than it was in 2020. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports more than 572,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs.

“There’s a ton of open cybersecurity jobs in the United States and that’s changing due to artificial intelligence,” Schwanke said. “What the market…

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