West campus advisory board building cyber workforce of future

December 05, 2017

Kim Jones, director of the Cybersecurity Education Consortium (CEC) and professor of practice at ASU’s West campus has organized a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Advisory Board.

The mission of this board is to provide opportunities and outreach for the community and general public who have interest in cybersecurity, as well as to determine how the CEC can better serve the cyber workforce, and how current academic courses in cybersecurity can potentially be improved.

The board consists of advisers Sheldon Cuffie, David Hoid, Malcolm Harkins, Stanley Jaroki, Jack Jones, David Schauble, Kimberly Trapani and Robert Wahl. These advisers bring together over 150 years of operational security experience from industries such as healthcare, financial services and manufacturing. Together, they work to combine all of their knowledge and experience in support of the CEC.

The members of the CISO Advisory Board allow the CEC to stay up to date in terms of current issues within the cyber community. This in turn allows a better and more current curriculum to be available for cybersecurity students, to whom the board will be regularly exposed in order to be aware of their experiences first hand. In the recent past, cybersecurity students have become out of touch with “real-world” experiences and current cyber technology, and Jones emphasized the importance of the CISO Advisory Board when it comes to keeping the cyber curriculum current.

“As a former CISO I can’t overstate the importance of a practical, interdisciplinary education for our future cyber warriors," he said. "The CISO Advisory Board will help keep the CEC grounded in practicality versus theory, while at the same time helping us to find ways to service the community as a whole.”