Bismarck’s University of Mary has a new program to teach students on how to deal with the issue of “cyber-security” – or, if you will, computer hacking.
Now, students can major in Computer Science with a concentration in cyber security.
Jennifer Fennewald teaches computer science. She says a student suggested a “computer club.”
"The students have had a lot of interest in the security area," said Fennewald. So , she reached out to Tim Swartz, with KLJ. She says Swartz teaches one class a week.
"Tim actually addresses all the different types of hacking," said Fennewald. "The penetration testing, down to hacking through Web sites and Web-site development."
Fennewald says Swartz teaches the students about protections from cyber attacks.
"In order to prevent hacking, they (the students) have to become good hackers," said Fennewald. "That's where Tim has helped us out a lot in understanding hacking and how it occurs, and the tools we can use to prevent hacking from occurring."
"It think that everybody should have at least a little bit of knowledge in computer security, to help protect themselves," said Swartz. He says in this arena, those who work on ways to prevent those attacks are often playing a game of “catch-up.”
"The attackers are one step ahead of the defenders," said Swartz. "The defenders can only, for the most part, be reactive to any sort of attacks."
"I've been looking at how to protect your code and protect everything," said Ariel Geffre, a student and member of the computer club. "Nowadays, everything is getting hacked into, and nothing's protected."
Geffre has first hand knowledge of this. She was scammed, when she tried to order something on-line.
"It looked real, so I typed in my information," said Geffre. "Here, my credit card company actually called me and said, 'Hey - this is not real.' The company stopped the charge. It's a scary feeling."
Andrew Dubiel is the student who originally proposed the computer club. He’s been working on an idea, based on his experiences in internships – where some people leave their computers unattended.
"Freom a security aspect, that's terrible," said Dubiel. "If the wrong person leaves the wrong computer unlocked, wrong things can happen."
So, Dubiel is working on a procedure, where a person has to log-on with a USB-device – a “thumb-drive” – and after a period of time, if the computer isn’t being used, it locks the computer.
"It's like a 'dead man' switch," said Dubiel. "If it doesn't get plugged back in, the computer will execute a command to lock the computer."
Tim Swartz says a big issue in preventing hacking is computer users being aware that hackers are out there, ready to pounce.
"People just aren't aware of the problems with computer security, and how to protect themselves," said Swartz.