MSU Denver cybersecurity students protect school districts, local governments from hackers

A program at the Metropolitan State University of Denver is helping local governments and small organizations in Colorado protect important data.

In MSU Denver’s CENTURION Secured program, cybersecurity students are trained to monitor and protect public-sector entities that represent more than 447,000 Coloradans. So far, program participants have spotted 1,682 potential security threats and mitigated 556 viable threats.

“I would say at the moment, the one which is pervasive and is most problematic is that of ransomware,” said Richard Mac Namee, leader of the CENTURION Secured program and director of cybersecurity at MSU Denver.

Mac Namee said the program monitors six school districts, two counties and one first responder organization.

“A lot of these public institutions don’t have the bandwidth to hire people to do this job,” said Monica Ball, a computer science major in her junior year at MSU Denver.

Ball is an analyst for the CENTURION Secured program. She said the program allows students to gain experience in cybersecurity and helps them understand the gravity of data breaches.

“It is devastating because it’s a life,” said Ball. “It can be a lifelong challenge to overcome certain data that gets leaked.”

Mac Namee said the experience students receive will help them stand out when it’s time to apply for jobs.

“Employers are very reluctant to bring on somebody straight out of a four-year degree program with only theoretical knowledge,” said Mac Namee. “They want hands-on experience. So what this does is really complement the degree program.”

The CENTURION Secured program, formerly known as Project PISCES, was awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. The funding is part of a $3.6 million settlement Colorado received from Equifax, Inc. following a nationwide data breach that occurred in 2017.

MSU Denver’s CENTURION Secured program is just one of many initiatives funded by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to protect public-sector entities that are resource-limited and vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The program has also extended to six other academic institutions and recruited 203 student analysts, far more than the original goal of 85 recruits within its first year.

CENTURION Secured offers free protection programs for local governments and paid protection programs for private entities.