Now the University is taking new steps to achieve these goals—by helping historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions develop similar programs of their own.

Strengthening cybersecurity programs at these institutions is the goal of the Cybersecurity Education Diversity Initiative Coalition, or CEDI, and in September, the National Security Agency (NSA) named Fordham as CEDI’s lead academic institution.

The NSA also awarded a $3 million grant to the Fordham-led effort.

“It has been known nationwide that there is a shortage in resources and expertise and opportunities for these minority institutions, and the NSA wants to shorten that gap,” said Thaier Hayajneh, Ph.D., director of Fordham’s cybersecurity center.

Hayajneh and Amelia Estwick, Ph.D., director of the National Cybersecurity Institute at Excelsior College, will serve as CEDI’s co-chairs.

About half of the grant will support institutions with cybersecurity programs as they devise plans to help minority- serving institutions develop their own programs, with the CEDI co-chairs overseeing their efforts, Hayajneh said.

The rest of the funds will directly support cybersecurity program development at historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. The “ultimate goal,” Hayajneh said, is for these programs to earn a designation for national excellence in cybersecurity education that Fordham received from the NSA in 2017.

The coalition will help with curriculum support, guest lecturers, faculty hires, advisers and mentors for students, and opportunities to take part in competitions and other cybersecurity activities, he said.

Cybersecurity Is Everyone’s Business

Students, particularly those from underrepresented communities, can be intimidated by cybersecurity, thinking it involves only computer science and programming, Hayajneh said.

One way to address that misconception is to attract students from other disciplines, including business, criminal justice, and political science.

“The NSA and other agencies have realized that there’s a huge shortage in the cybersecurity workforce, so they are trying to encourage more of what we call the ‘soft side of cyber’ and encourage students from other disciplines to come to cyber,” he said. “Cybersecurity is way beyond just malware detection or operating system security.”

A Global Hub for Cyber Resilience

The University’s expertise in cybersecurity spans academic disciplines and departments, including those at the Gabelli School of Business and Fordham Law School. Fordham offers a master’s degree program in cybersecurity that has more than tripled in enrollment since 2016, two computer science master’s degree programs with an emphasis on cybersecurity, and a minor for undergraduates.

Since 2009, Fordham has also partnered with the FBI every 18 months to host the International Conference on Cyber Security, or ICCS, which features presentations by university researchers, top security and law enforcement officials, and executives from companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google. The July 2019 conference featured the directors of the FBI and NSA as well as the U.S. attorney general.

Hayajneh, an expert on systems security, directs the master’s degree program and frequently collaborates with students on research. In one recent study, he and a student team devised a way to use blockchain technology to secure data collected from heart pacemakers, insulin pumps, and other cyber-physical systems. Their paper, published in the Journal of Medical Systems, has been cited nearly 200 times by other scholars since 2018.

Fordham’s program emphasizes competency-based learning and applied research to stay ahead of the latest threats and ever-rising cybercrime. “It makes students very successful when they go and seek jobs in the market,” Hayajneh said.

“We can’t just teach students math, programming, and then they can go and learn on the job. Nobody will hire you and give you their network to learn and to experiment with them,” he said. “Simple mistakes could bankrupt the whole company and cost them millions and billions of dollars.”

Graduates of the master’s program are working as software developers, digital forensic examiners, and directors of cybersecurity, among other roles. Their employers range from the United Nations to Con Edison, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Marvel Entertainment.

Ileana van der Linde is an executive director at JPMorgan Chase, where she leads the asset and wealth management group’s global cybersecurity awareness program and works to educate the firm’s clients about cyber risks. In 2018, she joined Hayajneh to lead a seminar on cybersecurity for individuals and small business owners in the Bronx. She had been studying to become a certified information systems security professional, but after learning about the Fordham program, she decided to enroll part time.

She was drawn to Fordham’s designation as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, she said, and to the “robust classroom discussion and networking” opportunities she found at the University. Her classmates include seasoned executives from the New York City Police Department, the FBI, and the NSA, as well as junior professionals and students she describes as “great programmers.”

“It’s a very big difference between what Fordham has and what other schools are offering,” she said.

—Kelly Kultys, FCRH ’15, is an assistant editor of this magazine.

The DoD Cyber Scholarships will cover the full tuition, health insurance, housing, and related expenses of the students, whose names are being withheld due to the sensitive nature of the work. In exchange, they will intern at DoD-affiliated organizations next summer and will work for a DoD organization such as the NSA for at least a year after graduating. (Update: In August 2020, the NSA allowed for the release of the students’ names. They are Patrick Mayrisch, GABELLI ‘ 20, and Peter Jennings, FCRH ’20.)

The funding for the scholarships represents one of two grants that were secured by University Professor Thaier Hayajneh, Ph.D., founding director of Fordham’s Center for Cybersecurity.

As a result of a successful application to the program, Fordham can now administer the grant to students, who are chosen by the DoD.

The other grant, which the center has secured twice previously, covers capacity building efforts for the University’s cybersecurity program that can be shared with other CAE-CDE partners.

Hayajneh said the scholarships, which are available to undergraduate and graduate students interested in cybersecurity, are a validation of both the students’ outstanding credentials and Fordham’s growing leadership in the field.

“It’s a great recognition for our undergraduate programs, because they’ve selected students who are getting undergraduate degrees at Fordham, one of them in computer sciences at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and the other in information systems at the Gabelli School of Business,” said Hayajneh.

The scholarships can be used for one or two years, so in the future, undergraduates in their junior year can apply for it as well and use it for their senior year of undergraduate studies and one year of a master’s program. The two students who received it this year will complete nine classes during the 2020-2021 academic year and earn their final credits with a practicum at their internship.

The master’s in cybersecurity has been offered since 2016, and is one of three degrees the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers with an emphasis on cybersecurity. There is also a minor offered to undergraduates.

Since 2009, Fordham has also partnered every 18 months with the FBI to organize and host the International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS), a four-day long conference that is regularly attended by the directors of the FBI and the NSA. The NSA designated the University a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education (CAE-CDE) in 2017.

In keeping with his goal of expanding recruitment of students to fields besides computer science, Hayajneh said that he reached out to all students either minoring or majoring the STEM field.

“The field of cyber has changed a lot. They don’t have to be programmers, they could be anything related to cybersecurity,” he said.

“These two students have really high GPAs, excellent credentials, and have been involved in internships in the past, and that’s why they were selected. Now that we’ve got these first grants, I’m optimistic that next year we’ll get five or even more.”

“I would show up to work every single day and learn of two, three, four more states that had been actively targeted by the same actors,” said Ferrante, a former FBI agent who was director of cyber incident response for President Barack Obama’s National Security Council at the time.

He says that and more in a recent 60 Minutes report, “When Russian Hackers Targeted the U.S. Election Infrastructure.” The segment highlights concerns that have come to define Ferrante’s career as a public official, private consultant, and adjunct professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at Fordham.

Ferrante is a senior managing director and the global head of cybersecurity practice at FTI Consulting and teaches in Fordham’s M.S. in cybersecurity program. He played a central role in establishing the International Conference on Cyber Security, co-organized by Fordham and the FBI and held every 18 months at the Lincoln Center campus.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Ferrante said hackers who targeted states’ systems “absolutely” could have caused havoc when Election Day came around. Asked by correspondent Bill Whitaker why they didn’t, he replied, “I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”

Watch the 60 Minutes segment here.