Dr. Cliff Zou is the Program Coordinator of the Master of Science in Cyber Security and Privacy program at the University of Central Florida.
He is also the Program Coordinator of the Master of Science in Digital Forensics, the Director of the UCF Alliance for Cybersecurity, and a Member of the UCF Cybersecurity and Privacy Cluster.
Dr. Zou has a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and MS and BS degrees in Automation from the University of Science & Technology of China (USTC). Faculty profile.
Listen to the episode
Here are the key takeaways
- Initial interest in cybersecurity: Dr. Zou’s interest in cybersecurity began during his PhD studies at UMass Amherst, particularly sparked by the 2001 Code Red worm incident.
- Current research focus: His current research is centered on practical cybersecurity challenges, such as defending against attacks on the Internet of Things and online card transaction fraud detection.
- Technical Focus in Cybersecurity: Dr. Zou emphasizes the technical aspects of cybersecurity, aligning with his background in computer science and engineering.
- Cybersecurity education at UCF: UCF offers comprehensive cybersecurity education, recognized by the NSA as a Center of Academic Excellence in both cyber-defense education and cybersecurity research. Programs include a Secure Computing and Networks minor, Cyber Operation undergrad certificate, and Master’s programs in Cybersecurity Privacy and Digital Forensics.
- Student life and opportunities: Students at UCF can join the Hack@UCF club, known for winning national cybersecurity competitions. The club offers practical experience and knowledge in cybersecurity.
The following is a full transcript of the podcast:
Steve Bowcut:
Welcome to the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast. My name is Steve Bowcut. I’m a writer and an editor for Cybersecurity Guide and the podcast’s host. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your listening.
Today, our guest is Dr. Cliff Zou. Dr. Zou is a professor at the University of Central Florida. Our topic for today is we’re going to be talking about the educational opportunities that a student may find related to cybersecurity at UCF. So before I introduce Dr. Zou, let me read a little bit from his bio.
Dr. Zou is the program coordinator of the Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Privacy program, the program coordinator of the Master of Science in Digital Forensics, the director of the UCF Alliance for Cybersecurity, and a member of the UCF Cybersecurity and Privacy Cluster. He has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science degrees in automation from the University of Science and Technology of China. And with that, welcome Dr. Zou. Thank you for joining me today.
Cliff Zou:
Thank you for the invitation.
Okay. Well this is going to be interesting. Let me start with a couple of questions just to help our audience know a little more about you. So tell us, how did you first become interested in cybersecurity? What got you on the track that you’re on now?
Cliff Zou:
Well, I think when I first came to the United States to become a PhD student in the UMass Amherst my PhD advisor asked me to study computer security, whether this is a promising research area. So I started to learn that. And the first major incident that caught my interest is the 2001 Code Red worm incident, which is the first internet-wide fast-spreading worms on the internet. And-
Steve Bowcut:
Right. I remember that. Yeah.
Cliff Zou:
Yeah. So my first research is on that topic and I generated my first research paper on that topic as well. So that’s when I first started to do cybersecurity research.
Okay. So now if we fast forward to where you’re at now in your career, what are you currently researching or working on? Are there any projects or papers that you’re working on you can share with us?
Cliff Zou:
Yeah, my research right now is still focused on cybersecurity research and of course also put a little more effort on cybersecurity education. So in the research part, I’m mainly dealing with those practical cybersecurity questions and challenges. And, for example, right now, the internet of things is very popular.
Steve Bowcut:
Sure.
Cliff Zou:
We try to study how to defend against attacks to attack internet of things, security and privacy issues, to get users personal information from this network traffic. So that is one research that we are doing right now and some others is online card transaction, fraud detection and defense. So my research is mainly on this networking-related cybersecurity issue and working on that, focused on these practical security issues.
Okay. So practical and maybe technical. So I wanted to ask you if there was a thread or a through-line that’s been with you throughout your course, your academic career, and it sounds like maybe it’s the more technical aspects of cybersecurity, but let me pose that in the form of a question. Is that true or have you also been interested in social engineering or threat intelligence gathering and those kinds of aspects of cybersecurity?
Cliff Zou:
Yeah, I think I’m most focused on the technical aspect of cybersecurity, because cybersecurity is a very broad area of research.
Steve Bowcut:
Yes. Exactly.
Cliff Zou:
So I’m not focusing on the sociology or intelligence part, I’m focusing on the technical, more close to computer science knowledge part.
Exactly. Right. Okay. And that certainly makes sense. It fits with what your educational background is with automation and computer engineering. All right. So let’s kind of get to the meat of the topic. So tell our audience about the cybersecurity educational opportunities that they will find at the University of Central Florida. Why would a student choose to go there?
Cliff Zou:
Yeah, UCF provides a very broad and good education on cybersecurity. Our school has been designated as a center of academic excellence in cyber-defense education and also as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Research by the NSA. So we have those two designations, and that’s the recognition of the nation, the universities within the US who have good cybersecurity education programs.
So in our school we provide this Secure Computing and Networks minor degree, for a long time, for more than 10 years. And it has produced many students who mainly have a bachelor degree in computer science or computer engineering.
But at the same time, they can get this minor degree to learn more on cybersecurity. In addition, we started this cyber operation undergrad certificate probably three to four years ago. So it’s a new certification program for undergrad students.
In the graduate program aspect, we have both the Master in Cybersecurity Privacy and also Master in Digital Forensic. Two master programs highly related to cybersecurity. And in some other departments, they also have some graduate certificates, like in the Institute of Simulation Modeling, which is a big institution in UCF, they provide this modeling and simulation of behavior of cybersecurity graduate certificates.
And our department of management also provides several risk management graduate certificates. So those are all non-technical, but other aspects of cybersecurity issues.
Exactly. Okay. So give us an idea. So if I’m a new student and I’ve decided I want to get an education in cybersecurity and I want to go to the University of Central Florida, what would my life be like? What kinds of projects would I be working on? Can you give us some insight into that?
Cliff Zou:
Yeah. For a student who is pursuing the undergrad bachelor degree, the best way is to enter either the computer science program or information technology program or computer engineering program. So those three bachelor degree programs are highly related to gain the basic knowledge, then they can take this secure computing and network minor degree. And in the meantime, UCF has a very well-known student club. It’s called Hack@UCF.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay.
Cliff Zou:
So you can Google search Hack@UCF.
Steve Bowcut:
Hack@UCF. Okay. We’ll put it in the show notes.
Cliff Zou:
You can find that.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay, good.
Cliff Zou:
Yeah, you can find that club information. They are very well-known because they have gained the national championship in many cybersecurity competitions held by, for example, the Department of Energy, held by some government organization. So they have a very long track record of winning this national championship. And the student club has more than 300 student members. They have this weekly meeting every Friday. So if you’re interested in cybersecurity, then it’s highly recommended that you join this student club and you can learn all kinds of knowledge and practical experience in cybersecurity.
Steve Bowcut:
Very cool. All right.
Cliff Zou:
Yeah.
Steve Bowcut:
That would be interesting. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.
Cliff Zou:
So, because many people when they hear about UCF, they first know, “Oh, you have a very good competition team.”
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah.
Cliff Zou:
Because they have gained this fame.
Right. Excellent. Thank you. I wanted to get your insight a little bit. So we all know that there’s what some people refer to as a skills gap or a shortage of trained cybersecurity workers in the field. And I’m wondering how that might be affecting educational programs. So has it changed what you teach and when you teach it, or are you trying to fill roles that the industry needs immediately? Or does it work the other way around where the industry, you guys at UCF, train your students and then they go out and fill whatever roles match what training you’ve given them. How does that work?
Cliff Zou:
Well, I think the United States right now is in great shortage of cybersecurity professionals and the government is aware of that. And so from the government aspect, we have provided many funding opportunities — government funding, like National Science Foundation, they provide this scholarship for service.
Scholarships give students full ride scholarship in exchange for you to serve in the government agencies for the same amount of time of the scholarship. So that is very popular and our school got that award two years ago. So each year we can give the scholarship to six, seven graduate and undergraduate students. It’s a full ride scholarship from the National Science Foundation.
And we are also participating in this Department of Defense scholarship for service program in the next year in 2023. So they will also provide additional scholarships to students who are willing to serve for the Department of Defense. So the government is trying to put these scholarships to try to attract more students to work for the government agencies.
Right. Interesting. And are you seeing that that emphasis that the government is putting on that, is it for a particular, I want to word this correctly, level of student? Is the industry clamoring for students with a bachelor’s degree that can man a SOC, a security operations center? Or is it more high-level students who can come up with more innovative ways for threat intelligence gathering? Where in the spectrum of workers the biggest shortage is, or is that not reflected in the government programs?
Cliff Zou:
The government program does not specify which aspect of cybersecurity students, because they need all-
Steve Bowcut:
All across the board. Right? Sure.
Cliff Zou:
Because the government feels that they cannot compete with industry in terms of salary. So they try to have scholarships to attract students.
Steve Bowcut:
Got it.
Cliff Zou:
To get them. So there’s no specific emphasis [inaudible 00:13:07] for what kind of knowledge you need to gain.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay.
Cliff Zou:
First.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay.
Cliff Zou:
Yeah.
Interesting. All right, so let’s assume we’re talking now to someone who, maybe they’re just graduating with their bachelor’s degree in computer engineering or computer science, they want to go into cybersecurity. What would your top picks be if you were to build a cybersecurity reading list? Where would you direct this student so they can learn more about the cybersecurity industry and what they would actually be doing, should they choose to go into cybersecurity? Books, papers, lectures, websites, conferences, YouTube channels, whatever resources are out there, do you think would give students a good view into working in cybersecurity?
Cliff Zou:
Well. There are many free cybersecurity resources and guidelines on the internet. Like your website, like some other website, like SANS, and many organizations, they provide the guideline, what kind of knowledge required for certain kind of career for the cybersecurity, in which job, like a penetration testing job, what kind of knowledge you required for IT, security maintenance, security analysis job, what kind of knowledge required. If you want to learn basic knowledge, a YouTube channel is a very good resource, you can find many free lectures.
Steve Bowcut:
Right.
Cliff Zou:
And demonstrations, whatever knowledge you can find, you can find in that. In addition, many universities’ faculty, they put their course teaching materials all online freely on their homepage. So, if you want to learn, for example, penetration testing, you can just Google search penetration testing, focused on the edu domain. Means education in university domain. You can find many faculties. There are lectures on that specific topic you search, including PowerPoint slides and maybe assignments. Some faculty also post their lecture videos online.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay.
Cliff Zou:
Yeah. So that’s a very good resource for you to learn by yourself.
Okay. Awesome. All right. So we’re about out of time, but I want to kind of end with this mostly fun question, but it can be interesting for our audience. So we’ll ask you to dust off your crystal ball, look into the future and tell us what you think the future of cybersecurity might look like in five years or 10 years. And I guess what we’re asking is, if a student’s just getting into cybersecurity now, are there things that they need to know that may come in the future that they should start preparing for now?
Cliff Zou:
I think a cybersecurity career is the typical computer science type of career, which is a fast-paced, fast-changing area, because technology changes very fast. So in order to be prepared for this career and also for the long-term working in this career, I believe that you need to gain two aspects.
First, you need to learn the basic fundamental computer science knowledge, gain solid knowledge on the basic computer science aspect, like networking, like basic operating system knowledge. Even though they may not help you directly in the short term, with the knowledge you will have the ability to catch up with the new technology, new things will appear in five years, 10 years.
So you can adapt to the changing speed of this field. So that’s one aspect. Another aspect is because this is a fast-changing field, so learning is not just when you are in school, learning is a lifelong style. So you need to gain the self-learning ability when you are still in university. So learn how to learn by yourself.
Right. Okay. So learn the basics, give a good solid basics in computer science and networking, and learn how to learn, so you can continue to learn throughout your career. And then you’ll be prepared for whatever those changes may be. I like that. That’s good sound advice. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.
All right, so we’re out of time, but Dr. Zou, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I appreciate it. This has been very informative. It’s going to be very helpful for our audience. So thank you and a big thanks to our listeners for being with us, and please remember to subscribe and review if you find this podcast interesting. And join us next time for another episode of the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast.
Cliff Zou:
Thank you. Thank you for this invitation and opportunity to speak of this very important matter.
Steve Bowcut:
Thank you. It’s been interesting.