By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
As cybersecurity threats continue to grow, Fort Hays State University has launched a program that hopes to help alleviate the damaging nature of online attacks and take advantage of the market opportunity in the growing cybersecurity industry.
“This entire initiative is really aligned with the Fort Hays State spirit of we see a problem, how can we contribute to solving it,” said Melissa Hunsicker-Walburn, informatics chair and associate professor.
She said the effort came from the concept of creating something that makes cybersecurity relevant and impactful to the Kansas economy and aligns with the Kansas Board of Regents' desire to increase economic prosperity in the state.
Specifically, the effort will contribute to protecting small businesses that lack the resources of major companies.
“We recognize that small businesses are often underserved or less than ideally attentive to its cybersecurity posture,” Hunsicker-Walburn said. “And so, recognizing that there are a lot of small and medium-sized businesses in Kansas ... that those businesses have, for whatever reason, tended not to really give priority to their cybersecurity posture, how could we in our cybersecurity program and our cybersecurity strengths at Fort Hays State, contribute to making that an improved situation?”
The answer, she said, led to the development of the institute.
“It's a two-track kind of venture,” Hunsicker-Walburn said. “The one track would be matching our students with small businesses to help advance small business security posture.”
The services would be delivered through “micro-internships,” she said. Those internships would be limited in time and scope and project-oriented.
“A student can be dispatched to go to a micro-internship, help a business with a problem or help a business become aware of some of their problems,” Hunsicker-Walburn said. “The student gets experience, they get real-world experience, they also get the soft skills of interacting with a small business and learning more about what that environment looks like in real-time. And then, of course, the small business comes out improved, and hopefully more secure, and a viable part of the Kansas economy as a result.”
The benefactor would also benefit from the experience of the internship coordinator and assistant professor of informatics, Jason Zeller.
“He is the one who has mapped the internships to the curriculum to know that a student doing this type of work for business needs to have had these kinds of things, and he will have them vetted them for their skill,” Hunsicker-Walburn said. “And so, there's additional quality assurance that comes from [Zeller’s] involvement in what we’re doing.”
The internships are slated to launch in January. Hunsicker-Walburn said about 15 pilot projects are already being vetted.
The second part of the program, the tech incubator, will help guide those in the area with technology-based ideas to create viable business opportunities.
“If somebody out there has a has the tech acumen and a great idea, but they're they don't know how to do a business plan, or they don't really know how to seek capital, or they don't know how to protect their intellectual property that they have in their idea itself they would apply to be a business or venture in residence,” Hunsicker-Walburn said.
From there, she said the department would draw from faculty and community expertise and create its incubation team. And then, over a month’s long effort, the team would work to guide the project to the market.
“We really actually hope to have new venture creation and job growth and job creation in this area of tech and cybersecurity,” Hunsicker-Walburn said.
That portion of the project is slated to launch next summer.
Ultimately, the Cybersecurity Institute and Technology Incubator will be overseen by a full-time director. The search to fill the position will being soon, Hunsicker-Walburn said.
"We're really pretty excited about the possibilities here," she said. "We think that there's going to be a lot that we learned through the iterative processes. We were just joking yesterday with President Mason that there's no manual here — we're writing it. But that's also very exciting to be able to possibly get a model for something like this, that then we can also use to help other rural areas that face the same challenges that we are trying to solve."