Summer of cyber: Latino middle schoolers make their first clicks towards a cybersecurity career
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Last month, a massive data breach at one of the largest cybersecurity firms in the nation, CrowdStrike, grounded airlines, blocked email inboxes and crippled networks across the United States.
Training a new generation of cybersecurity professionals to protect against similar attacks drove UCCS’s Summer Cybersecurity Camp, which, for the first time this year, brought predominantly Spanish-speaking middle schoolers to the Colorado Springs campus for five days to learn about the field.
“This is the new generation that is going to take over once we retire,” said Javier Popoca, a cybersecurity analyst who met with the campers.
“We need to show the new generation that this isn’t just a fancy phone,” Popoca said as he held up his phone. “You need to protect it and to protect themselves and others.”
The free camp introduced about a dozen students to the world of cybersecurity through hands-on games, workshops and guest lecturers.
Siblings Daniel and Esther, who are incoming eighth and ninth graders from Denver, learned about the camp through Spanish-language news. Their parents booked a hotel room for the week so they could attend the camp.
“If we learn [about cybersecurity] right now, we can teach other generations, and even our parents,” said Esther. “That’s why it’s really interesting, because these security things are the future.”
The camp offers students who might not otherwise be exposed to such career paths the opportunity to learn about what cyber defense is, said Gretchen Bliss, the director of the Cybersecurity program at UCCS.
A large percentage of Latino students drop out of their technical degrees between their second and third years of UCCS’s undergraduate cybersecurity program, Bliss said.
“The Latino community here is such an integral part of our society, and we really want to make those folks feel welcome… because a lot are interested in cyber, they just don’t know how to get started,” said Bliss.
She hopes that holding the camp in Spanish for the first time this year will increase interest among younger students and elevate Latino representation in the Colorado Springs cybersecurity industry as a whole.
Broadly speaking, cybersecurity is the protection of cyberspace, the amorphous realm where all digital data exists. Public and private cybersecurity agencies defend data from potential hackers, whether the information is a corporation’s business records or an individual’s personal information. That field of defense is known as “cybersecurity.”
The market is projected to grow by about $370 billion in the next eight years, though some believe its impact may reach into the trillions.
Organizers at the UCCS camp drew from the field to bring a four-person career panel of Latino professionals currently working in cybersecurity.
“A young, Hispanic kid taking interest in cybersecurity and not being afraid of speaking both Spanish and English, what someone like that will bring to an organization, a business corporation, is invaluable,” said Vic Tise, a retired Army intelligence officer who specialized in Latin America.
“You have social hackers and technical hackers,” said Alfred Ortiz, CEO of CSD Cyber. “So you don’t have to be technical or know how to code to work in cybersecurity.”
Social hacking refers to coercing victims into sharing information and money through lies and sometimes elaborate storytelling, while technical hacking refers to more code and programming-based data robbery.
Jaidie Vargas, who works with young emerging tech professionals, said two of the most pressing inhibitors towards inspiring incoming cybersecurity workers is a lack of resources and a lack of awareness of how much opportunity exists in the field.
“In Colorado this year, there are a lot of careers opening up, like with the semiconductor industry coming here,” Vargas said.
”We have to start getting these careers out there to the youngest generation.”
Joel Ramirez, who is pursuing an MBA in Cyber Management at UCCS, teaches at Pikes Peak State College and has helped organize the UCCS Cybersecurity Camps over the last three years.
He feels especially proud to be working with other Hispanic and Latino students from his community, and he hopes to empower and inspire their future careers as he develops his own.
“It’s a little bit closer to my heart, being Hispanic myself and not having stuff like this for us when I was growing up,” said Ramirez. “It’s exciting to see a little bit of every type of Hispanic culture here represented… you get to hear their perspective of how cybersecurity is important in their day-to-day lives.”