{"id":25799,"date":"2025-05-02T14:40:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T14:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=25799&post_type=story"},"modified":"2025-05-02T20:48:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T20:48:34","slug":"call-security","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/call-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Call Security"},"content":{"rendered":"
Step inside the L3Harris Engineering Center and you\u2019re greeted by 12 black and gold championship banners hanging in the atrium. A trophy case, five shelves high, houses glimmering gold cups and team photographs. Another displays more than 40 crystal awards and plaques.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are somewhat out of display space,\u201d says Senior Instructor Tom Nedorost \u201902MS<\/strong>, coach for the Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ Collegiate Cybersecurity Competition Team and advisor for the university\u2019s Collegiate Cyber Defense Club, better known as Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½. \u201cI have three more trophies in my office that still need a place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s time to invest in a larger trophy case. If history is known to repeat itself, Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ has a lot<\/em> more success in store.<\/p>\n The club is arguably the best in the nation at what it does. No other university has won more National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competitions (NCCDC)<\/a>. At last count in early April, Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ had earned 105 first-place awards \u2014 35 second-place and 30 third-place finishes at regional and national competitions.<\/p>\n Its students and alumni are regularly employed for paid internships and full-time positions fresh out of college at some of the world\u2019s biggest companies \u2014 including Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Meta and Microsoft, to name just a few. In a world that is increasingly online \u2014 even refrigerators and washing machines are \u201csmart\u201d these days \u2014 the evolution of the Internet of Things has expanded our vulnerability with more backdoor access points. On a micro level from our bank accounts and personal health data, to the macro level of national security, if it\u2019s connected to the internet, it can be hacked.<\/p>\n \u201cCyber touches everything, and that\u2019s why you\u2019re seeing a lot more companies investing in security,\u201d Nedorost says. \u201cWe are nowhere near close to saturating the number of opportunities that are out there for our students.\u201d<\/p>\n Nedorost has been with the club since its inception in Fall 2012, when a senior information technology student, Jonathan Singer \u201913<\/strong>, approached him with the idea to form a cybersecurity team to participate in a competition the following spring.<\/p>\n Singer emailed fellow students with a link to the prospective competition, requesting their attendance at an exploratory meeting a few days later.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping we\u2019d have at least 12 students there so we could field a full team, and the room ended up packed,\u201d Nedorost recalls. \u201cWe decided to form a cybersecurity club for interested students, and it\u2019s just been ongoing and growing ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n The club now boasts more than 450 student members, whom Nedorost describes as highly motivated self-starters committed to upholding Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½\u2019s legacy of achievement and contributing to the industry even before they graduate. It\u2019s proving to be an industry with a lot of lucrative shoes to fill.<\/p>\n According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, jobs for information security analysts, with a median salary of $120,360, are expected to grow 32% from 2022 to 2032.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen peers who were in the same classes with me \u2014 we have the same degree, but I was in the club and they weren\u2019t \u2014 and it took them a few years to even get started,\u201d says Christian Campana-Emard \u201920<\/strong>, who worked paid summer internships at Northrop Grumman and Microsoft before becoming a cloud security engineer at medical device and healthcare company Abbott Laboratories.<\/p>\n These Knights\u2019 enthusiasm and interest in the field, combined with their sustained success, have led to some major milestones not just for the club, but the university as a whole.<\/p>\n In 2016 Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ was named a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyberdefense Education by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency. In 2019 Lockheed Martin donated $1.5 million for a cyber innovation lab to serve as a practice hub and continuing education space for the team.<\/p>\n In 2021 Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ added a master\u2019s degree in cyber security and privacy<\/a>, a huge win for the more than 6,000 computer science<\/a>, information technology<\/a> and computer engineering<\/a> undergraduate students enrolled as of Spring 2025. Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ produces one in four engineering and computer science graduates in Florida, according to the State University System.<\/p>\n By day, they\u2019re gaining a solid base of knowledge in how computers work in the classroom. By night, they\u2019re gaining practical experience in the club. It\u2019s a winning combination.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ does a good job of teaching core principles, but it\u2019s hard to teach the deeper concepts, and that\u2019s where Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ comes in,\u201d says Matthew McKeever \u201924<\/strong>, a full-time cyber engineer at intelligence solutions company Nightwing and master\u2019s student who was part of the 2024 NCCDC championship squad and selected to the U.S. Cyber Team in 2023. \u201cThat experience you get from competing is so valuable. Winning national CCDC is like a year\u2019s worth of work experience on your resume.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to argue with the results.<\/p>\n Encouraged by the university\u2019s trajectory and investment in its foundational STEM and technical programs, Nedorost says he\u2019s confident about the future of Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½.<\/p>\n And now, with an ever-growing alumni base, he\u2019s got reinforcements to help ensure the next generation of Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ members are ready to tackle whatever cyber innovations are thrown their way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all so thirsty for knowledge about cybersecurity and have a genuine excitement for it,\u201d says Kevin Colley \u201918<\/strong>, a staff product security engineer at Tesla. \u201cWhen one of us figured something out, we\u2019d present it to the rest of the members, so we were always collectively learning together. That doesn\u2019t end with graduation. Alumni come back to teach workshops or provide mentorship to further enrich the new students. It\u2019s a beautiful cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Colley can only say so much about the work he does every day to help secure Tesla\u2019s electric vehicles and products.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why he was so excited when he received clearance to present at a professional conference last May on one of his most significant Tesla projects to date.<\/p>\n Over the course of six months, Colley developed XPin \u2014 a security feature for Linux, software that is part of Tesla\u2019s in-vehicle operating system \u2014 which requires any code to be securely verified.<\/p>\n \u201cIt enforces that all running code is cryptographically verified by Tesla, blocking an exploitation pattern used in sophisticated cyberattacks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ played a significant role in Colley\u2019s career success and origin story.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nJoining the Force<\/h2>\n
Full STEM Ahead<\/h2>\n
The following Hack@Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ alumni are a mere sampling of the many Knights impacting the cybersecurity industry today:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Kevin Colley \u201918<\/h4>\n
Staff Product Security Engineer at Tesla <\/em>
\nSeattle <\/em>
\nB.S. in Computer Science<\/em><\/p>\n