Lewis Heuermann is a full-time cybersecurity instructor and undergraduate program coordinator at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, bringing extensive military, industry, and teaching experience to hands-on cybersecurity education.
Summary of the episode
Heuermann discusses practical training in areas such as Linux and Windows security, networking, cyber defense, penetration testing, digital forensics, incident response, and security operations, along with student opportunities through the Islander Cyber Society, competitions, community outreach, and industry-focused projects involving critical infrastructure, ports, refineries, drones, and agriculture.
He also encourages prospective students and career changers to stay curious, explore different areas of technology, and focus on building practical skills rather than worrying too much about choosing the perfect major at the start.
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Read a full transcript of the episode
Steven Bowcut:
Welcome to the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast, where we explore educational opportunities, career pathways, and the people helping prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
I’m your host, Steven Bowcut. Today, we’re looking at cybersecurity education at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, where students can combine a strong computer science foundation with specialized preparation in cyber defense, network security, digital forensics, incident response, and infrastructure protection.
My guest today is Lewis Heuermann, a full-time cybersecurity instructor and program coordinator for the undergraduate cybersecurity program. Lewis has played an important role in expanding hands-on cybersecurity opportunities for students. He helped establish and mentor the Islander Cyber Society, supports student participation in cybersecurity competitions, and works to strengthen connections between the university and regional industry.
His efforts also help introduce students to operational technology and critical infrastructure security, areas that are especially relevant to the ports, refineries, energy operations, and agricultural systems, and other industrial environments surrounding Corpus Christi.
Welcome, Lewis. Welcome to the Cybersecurity Ed Podcast. Thank you for joining me today.
Lewis Heuermann:
Welcome, Stephen, and hi everybody. It’s great to see everybody.
Steven Bowcut:
All right, so let’s jump right in. One thing that our audience is used to that we really like to do is we’d like to start with a little more background about our guest and kind of gives our audience an insight into what they might do with the cybersecurity education. So tell us a little bit about your academic and professional journey, how you got to where you are and what led you to this interest that you have in cybersecurity.
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about that. I took rather a untraditional path where when I came out of high school, I wasn’t completely convinced with what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I joined the military and I spent about 10 years in the military on fast attack submarines where I got exposed to a lot of different technologies, a lot of different types of personalities who use technology, and I got really fascinated into that. And that’s where I really picked up the interest and the skills to get into technology.
And that’s where I started working on that. Once I got out of the military, I used my benefits to then go to college while I was working full-time as a network engineer and really just came up that way, just following my natural interest in things. I’ve always been a tinkerer, I always wanted to understand how things worked, and I just kept following that thread.
And so I completed my bachelor’s and then immediately after did my master’s and kept working for the government and different civilian organizations, just continuing to follow that interest. That led me through pretty much every version of technology that exists, networks, servers, how users interact, what are their frustration points, how can I help them through that and navigate it?
And then that’s really what got me into teaching is I realized I really enjoyed helping people who maybe look at networks or computers in a kind of frustrating way and helped them through that and see a success that they weren’t seeing before. And that guide on the side is really what defines my teaching style today.
And I shifted after about a 20-year career in industry over to teaching full-time. I did it part-time for about 10 or 15 years, and then I’ve now been full-time for about the last three or four years where I’ve really just intentionally focused on bringing all that industry knowledge, skill sets, and being hands-on into the classroom.
Steven Bowcut:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for your service in the military. I always think that’s an excellent opportunity for young people who may not have the financial wherewithal or backing to jump right into their educational journey, but a few years in the military will help. I did the very same thing, so thank you very much.
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, I always say the military is the poor kids’ hunger games. If you survive, then you get to go to college for free.
Steven Bowcut:
There you go.
Lewis Heuermann:
Wonderful way.
Steven Bowcut:
All right. All right. So Texas A&M Corpus Christi offers a Bachelor of Science in computer science with a cybersecurity and infrastructure option as I understand it. So for students and families that may not be familiar with this, how would you describe this degree pathway and what kind of student is likely to thrive in it?
Lewis Heuermann:
We get a lot of students from a lot of different backgrounds. We have a lot of first generation students. I’m a first generation student, so I can empathize with that journey. And what the cybersecurity infrastructure degree path is meant to do is take you from knowing nothing at all to being able to help an organization identify a threat cybersecurity-wise and then help them defend against it.
And we do a lot of things in our curriculum to bring you from never having really seen anything behind the scenes on a computer to exposing you to all these different technologies leading up to actively. We use the phrase hacking, but really it’s active penetration testing, which is where we use these tools to see if there are any security vulnerabilities and then turn around and taking that insight and defending against it. And so the first thing we do is we start you out with understanding how to think like a computer engineer.
How do we solve problems with technology? How do we work through things logically? And then we build on that by learning different operating systems like Linux and other different very specialized operating systems and working you into this very kind of methodical mindset of breaking big problems into smaller parts and then working through those individual problems one at a time.
Steven Bowcut:
Okay, excellent. So students that are considering getting their cybersecurity education there don’t necessarily have to have a lot of technical skills already, it sounds like. Although I presume that at this point, the students coming in are pretty much digital natives, so they were pretty much born with a cell phone in their hands.
So they’re certainly used to technology and grew up with it as opposed to my generation, we kind of had to learn about it from the beginning, but so that probably gives them an advantage. Even if they’re not technical people, they certainly use and understand technology more than previous generations. So that’s helpful.
Lewis Heuermann:
That’s right.
Steven Bowcut:
So as I understand it, the curriculum includes coursework in Linux and Windows security, networking, cyber defense, digital forensics, intrusion detection and incident response. So how do, or do, maybe is a better question, these courses build on one another and what technical capabilities will the student, what can they do by graduation, what have you taught them to do?
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, so coming into it, the main thing I always say is you don’t have to be smart, but you do have to be curious because to be good computer cybersecurity analyst and hackers as it were, to be good at this, you have to be interested. And when you’re curious about something, you’ll spend however long it takes to overcome any challenges, to work through the frustrating points, to seek out the harder problems.
And that’s where we start is we start by saying, what makes you curious? What are you questioning? What wakes you up, not what do you wake up for? And I know when I get curious about something, that something will wake me up. I’ll say, okay, I’ve had enough sleep, time to go work on that because I’m curious how it works. I want to dig into it. And so the way our curriculum builds on itself is first we build that basic knowledge of what is computer thinking?
How do we think about computers? How do we think about the problem of computers and how do we break big problems into smaller parts? And one of the things I like to think about is, I call it the norms, the normals, the non-computer people. They tend to think of things in a world of spaghetti, a plate of spaghetti. They have problems and people, they’re all intertwining all over the place.
And as computer scientists or cybersecurity analysts, we tend to think of things like waffles. And when we think of things like waffles, waffles have all these little squares and we tend to solve it one square at a time because when we can break a big thing into these smaller squares and we can solve these things one square at a time, eventually we’ve eaten the waffle and the waffle is solved. And that’s how we tend to approach things.
And so with cybersecurity in general, to get to that point of understanding how to break these bigger things into these smaller parts, you first have to understand all the players involved. And in that sense, we start out with operating systems.
You don’t have to know Linux at all. My first day of Linux is first exposing you to what it is, why do we use it? What makes it so different than Windows that you’ve probably used your entire life? Why do we use Linux? What makes it so important? And then we start there and then by the end of the semester, believe it or not, you’ll be practically an expert at Linux. We’ll work through hands-on labs.
Everything I do is hands-on. And so we’ll be at the terminal day one, jumping in, playing, breaking, doing the dangerous things safely in the classroom so that when you go out into the world, you can do that dangerous thing more confidently and confidently because you did it in this safer place.
And then after you do Linux, you’re going to go to Windows, but not Windows like you’ve probably been using your entire life on your Chromebook and things like that. We’re going to look at it from the behind the scenes. You’ve played the movie all your life on Chromebooks and in desktops that you used at school. That’s endpoint Windows, that’s basic Windows.
We’re going to dig into it on the server side and learn from A to Zer, knowing nothing going into it. By the time you leave that class, you’re going to know how the internet works. You’re going to know all the servers involved, something called a DNS server, something called a DHCP. So you’re going to learn all these different ways that the Windows is used to create the internet. And then of course we’re going to learn how to identify vulnerabilities in that and how bad people exploit those things.
Because when you know what’s broken, when you know what’s naturally exposed on a server, then you know what to look for. And once you know that and you understand it and you’ve played with it, you’ve gotten hands on with it, you’ve set it up, you tore it down, you set it up, you tore it down, then you’re going to say, “Oh, I don’t just know it. I understand it.” And then that’s when I make you a lifelong Mac user and it’ll all be great.
But that’s what we are always trying to achieve here is not just rope memorization. Students have passed exams their entire life. They’ve taken multiple choice exams their entire life. We want to elevate that. Most of my classroom exams are you doing the thing that we’ve been learning the entire semester. No tricks, no trap, no stump the chump. I give you the thing that we’ve been learning.
I say, “Do the thing that we’ve been learning.” And 9.9 times out of 10, people walk into my midterms and finals excited. I know that’s hard to believe, but it is true. They walk in there excited because they know I’m not there to trick them. I’m there to show them that they actually learned something and they embrace that. And that’s our culture.
Steven Bowcut:
That sounds very appealing, I think, to a lot of young people. That is awesome. Thank you. So Texas A&M Corpus Christi is, I always like to note that it’s recognized as a National Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. So there again, for our audience that may not be totally familiar with that, what does that designation tell prospective students and their families about the quality or the focus of the university cybersecurity education? Why do you have that or what does it mean?
Lewis Heuermann:
The cyber defense designator means that we have been nationally accredited because we have a long-term sustained focus on cyber defense education, meaning that by the time you graduate from here, you can confidently say you can defend an organization against external cyber threats, external and internal. We pass through routine certification audits. They look at our curriculum, they look at our student outcomes, how long does it take for students to get hired in a position, things like that.
They look at it all to say, okay, TAMU-CC is doing it right and they’re serving their community, they’re serving their students, making sure they have a solid education that is creating opportunities for that student when they leave. Also in about, knock on wood, in about a year, I’m also hopeful that we’ll have the offense designator as well, meaning that our graduates will be able to turn around and for an organization, preemptively test and expose vulnerabilities of the organization internally and externally.
So now we’re not just defending, we’re also going in and showing offensively how can we find the vulnerability before the bad actor does? And so with that, we can create well-rounded graduates. And what’s helping us do both of those is that hands-on education. I’ll give you a little insight. If you’re sitting out there as a learner and you’ve been taking exams your whole life, then this would be the time to listen.
My penetration test, which is otherwise colloquially known as my hacker class, is where I teach you how to find vulnerabilities, how to expose them, how to exploit them, but I also teach physical security, so it’s not just computers. I also teach lock picking. And so we cover two weeks of just lock picking.
And the reason why we do that is because if someone has important documents or sensitive computer technologies behind a weak door, then we can put every electronic safety around that digital system and none of it’s going to matter if that door just swings open after two minutes of trying.
And so my final exam in that class has three parts. One, you hack a website, and then two, you have to pick three locks of different types to finally get to the final boss of the exam, and that is a major infrastructure that you have to hack to get the final grade. And all of that, believe me, is campus wide known to be one of the most exciting finals.
That’s the only class I have a line outside the door waiting for me to show up so that they can get in there and have fun because that’s ultimately what it’s about. If we’re not enjoying what we’re doing, then you’re not learning. And I like to think of it like I’m preparing you not just for your career and education to be a leader in cybersecurity, but also to inspire you to be excited about the topic so that you can then turn around and inspire others through your excitement.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, that is very cool. I have to tell you, Lewis, I’ve done dozens, literally dozens of these interviews, and I think this is probably the first time that we’ve talked about lock picking, and that’s something that’s near and dear to my heart.
I came up through the physical security world and I understand the importance of protecting the physical aspects of the network, for example, or the computer and the data that’s being stored, because if it’s easier to just come in and get it, then they can do that as well if it’s important information that they want. So thank you. I like that.
All right, so cybersecurity is a field that you need to have practical ability along with academic knowledge, so you need to do both. And we’ve talked about the hands-on aspect that you like to emphasize. So what are some of the tools, security tools or investigative tools that they will learn to use with this hands-on experience that you’re giving them?
Lewis Heuermann:
Well, one of the things that is a major focus is using tools that you’re going to experience when you get out into an actual job. Some of the tools that in cyber defense that you’re going to encounter are what we call a SOC or security operations center. You’re going to encounter a lot of software systems in there. A Security Onion is one of them. Elastic is another. These kind of systems, these dashboards that absorb all of these logs that come in from these different systems and then they alert.
An alert’s only as good as it is interpreted by the operator. And so we have live running SOC systems in our classroom. And so during, say, if you’re in my cyber defense class, you will literally be staffing a security operations center dashboard during the course of the class, receiving alerts. You have to then interpret, research, and decide if that is an alert that you need to care about or if you can dismiss it as nothing.
And then if it is something, how big of a something is it? And then escalate it based on that. And so these kind of analytical skills of actually using the software that you will encounter on day one builds your confidence when you walk into an organization and say, “Oh, I’ve done this.”
Steven Bowcut:
I’ve done that.
And a little aside question, there are literally dozens of different tools that different manufacturers offer. So do you look for something that is just very generic or are they all enough alike that once you’ve used one, you could switch to another one without that much problem?
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, that’s a wonderful parallel. Sometimes it can be hard to train on vendor technologies, but at the end of the day, it’s all the same research analytics. You still are going to receive an alert that is going to tell you something is happening and you have to know your network well enough to know that something matters.
Steven Bowcut:
The which button to click to get the alert
Lewis Heuermann:
That’s right.
Steven Bowcut:
Or to respond to it is probably not that important.This is what you’re looking at and this is what you have to do with it.
Lewis Heuermann:
Exactly right. And I always say, if you probably are listening, you have a driver’s license or you’re about to have a driver’s license, they didn’t ask you on your driver’s license, what car did you learn how to drive on
Steven Bowcut:
Good point, I like that.
Lewis Heuermann:
They just asked, did you drive a car? Yes, because four wheels, at least two doors and at least one windshield and a motor and a steering wheel are the core components of knowing how to operate a vehicle. And so that’s what we focus on is what are the core components of being a functional leader in cyber defense? And that’s the skills that we focus on.
Steven Bowcut:
I like that. I may steal that little analogy from you and use it myself because it doesn’t matter if it has a nice stereo system or if it has an AM radio, that’s not important right now for getting your education. You just need to know how to drive the car. So I like that. That’s
Lewis Heuermann:
That’s right.
Steven Bowcut:
All right. So let’s talk a little bit about this Islander Cyber Society. What do students do? Why is it important to them? Why do you promote it? And as I understand it, you kind of helped with the founding and the initial idea. So talk to us about that.
Lewis Heuermann:
Well, the Islander Cyber Society was definitely, when I got here, TAMU-CC did not have a cybersecurity club, any kind of student organization focused on cybersecurity, that kind of thing. And I just said, in one of my more technical classes, I said, “Hey, where do the nerds hang out? I’m a nerd. I want to go hang out with nerds. Where do the nerds hang out?” Because I also do this for fun. I come home in the evenings to relax.
I’m usually doing something cybersecurity related, whether it’s hardware, software, something. I do this for fun as much as I do it in the classroom. And so I said, “Hey, where do the nerds hang out?” And they said, “Well, they don’t hang out. Are you going to open up a room to hang out in?” I said, “Well, I am now.” And that is literally how Islander Cyber Society came together was like-minded students who just wanted to get together and hack and talk about computers and different types of computers.
We just started hanging out one day and it grew from zero students to about 150 today. And it’s just an incredible gathering of people who are nerdy about computers. And it’s not just hacking. We have students who are into different operating systems, students who are into networking, who like to build things, robotics, drones. We’ve had students who practice speeches before they go to a conference.
We have several folks over the last two years that have presented for the first time in the International Women in Cybersecurity Conference in Dallas to a group of several hundreds of professional cybersecurity ladies across the international community, all come together to watch them give a talk on a topic.
And so that’s what the Islander Cyber Society is, just a bunch of nerds hanging out. We have a good time and we share knowledge. We do drawings, we do door prizes, we do community events, we exchange knowledge.
Some students will give workshops on topics. We had a student last semester give a talk on how to expose the vulnerabilities of IP cameras. And so what he showed was how he could, with a $3 device, take down an entire IP camera infrastructure and break into a system. And so showing that this camera that had high reviews on Amazon was vulnerable to a $3 chip that he got off of Amazon was an incredible workshop.
And we don’t do those to say, “Hey, go and do bad things with this.” It’s so that everyone who attended that workshop can then turn around and go to an organization who might be using that device and say, “Hey, this should not be the only thing you’re using to secure your company.” And so that’s what the Islander Cyber Society is all about is bringing these like-minded people into the same room and we all learn from each other.
We’re doing community events. We had several students get together last semester as well and a semester before that and go out into the community and give talks to real estate agents and things like that, talking about the dangers of wire transfers.
Now, if you’re out there listening, you say, “Well, I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know about wire transfers. I’ve never given a talk in front of people.” Great. Come hang out with us because all those folks who did that learned it hanging out in the Islander Cyber Society.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, that is so very cool, and I appreciate that. I was going to ask you a follow-up question about what are the non-technical skills that the students will learn from these competitions and from the Islander Cyber Society. And I think you’ve just done a great job addressing that already.
So one of the things I think students need to understand is, and for some of them, it’s kind of a big pill to swallow, but your success in cybersecurity will be limited if you can’t do some of these other things like you just talked about, if you can’t speak to a crowd or if you can’t write a good report or things that are not directly related to your job as a cybersecurity professional, but your career will be kind of stinted if you can’t do those things.
So an organization for students like this that helps them develop those skills right along with the technical skills that they’re going to need to be successful, I think it’s just such an awesome idea.
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah. I say back in the day, the stereotype of the computer person in the basement in a server room who never talked to people was true for a very short period of time. That is no longer true today.
Today, the cybersecurity analyst, the IT worker is very much a forward-facing, customer-facing position. You’re going to interact with other non-technical people and you’re going to have to help them. And that can be a very uncomfortable skill to develop, but it is a skill that can be developed. That is another one of those dangerous things that in our classrooms and in the Islander Cyber Society, we do it in a safe place.
You can do that dangerous thing of getting up in front of a room of your peers who are there to support you, and yes, you’re going to be nervous. Yes, you’re going to mess up words and give it and give feedback and work on it and get applauded and get supported to help you grow those skills so that when you leave that safe place, you are able to function and grow your career and be a leader in cybersecurity.
You don’t have to get on a stage in front of 2000 people, but you should be able to get in front of three people and explain your value and help others work through technical challenges in a way they can appreciate and grow from. And that’s the kind of skills that you’ll get here.
Steven Bowcut:
Thank you for that. All right, so in the little biographical introduction that we did, one of the things that stood out to me is that you’re involved with local industries helping find out what it is that they need so that you can incorporate that into your curriculum as I understand it. So talk to us about that. How do you do that? How do you get information from the industries and how do you work that into the coursework?
Lewis Heuermann:
One of the things that I started doing, I’m referring to it as bringing the outside in. And what I think of as a learner, as an educator, as just a nerd, when I see things around me, I’m always curious about those things. And sure, I can watch some YouTube videos and say, “Wow, that very unique situation, that looked cool, but maybe that thing doesn’t exist in my environment, meaning when I go to school, I don’t see it. When I go to the grocery store, I don’t see it.”
And so while it was cool for five minutes in a TikTok video, it is not going to stay in my memory because I don’t really see it in my every day. And so what sticks for me is what I see every day, stoplights. In Corpus Christi, we have a lot of oil and gas here in Texas, and we have a big port here in Corpus Christi. I believe right now it’s the number two in the world.
And so we have a lot of ships, a lot of bridges, a lot of infrastructure like that. And so we do see that every day in our environment. So I think to myself, if I own that company, what are my cybersecurity concerns? What is the thing that’s keeping me up at night? And then how do I help them with that pain point?
And so of course, we can’t just learn that looking outside and in the window. And so what we started doing was having discussions with the port of Corpus Christi and some of the refineries around here and say, when you hire IT people, when you hire cybersecurity people, if at all, what is the pain you’re trying to solve?
What makes you think, I need someone, I need a nerd in this chair to help me with this. And so I just started having those conversations and from that, we learned that they have a lot of challenges with things like operational technology and information technology.
These are two different worlds, but because of the advancement of technology, they’re being bridged much faster than solutions are being created. So we’re working to bring that into the classroom as well as the port. The port has a ton of security challenges, both at the IT level, but also the operational level, physical security, things like that.
And so the ships are all basically floating networks, all the controls on a ship that lead, that control the motors, the tank levels, the engines, the navigation systems, all of these things are basically one big network that has vulnerabilities.
So we bring that into the classroom. And the thing that’s coming up even more lately, self-driving cars. A self-driving car is basically a whole network business driving down the road. And if you think about a highway full of 20 self-driving cars or even electric vehicles, they all have digital systems on board, all have security vulnerabilities.
Now just like maybe a month or two ago, a new vulnerability was released on power charging stations for cars. A hacker had gotten in, put a malware on it, and so when they plugged the car in to charge it, boom, the car was infected and the car got messed with. And so things like that require you sitting out in the audience to hear that, see it in our surroundings and say, “How can I be a change agent in that world to defend against people who wouldn’t even know that’s a problem?”
And that’s where we bring these industries conversations into the classroom so that we’re not solving made up problems just to create a strong exam. We’re bringing in actual problems, actual things that are outside that we’re seeing every day into the classroom that you all out there listening right now could come in and help us think through in a new way, in a different way, in a way you see in your outside and bring it into the classroom.
Steven Bowcut:
Very cool. And there’s another benefit on the other side of that same coin, I get. So if you look at a program like that from the community or from the business community’s perspective, so what you’re doing is you’re training students who are going to be qualified for the kinds of jobs that are available in the Corpus Christi area, and guess what?
Those companies now benefit from that. Now you’re going to stay there, your students are going to stay there. And so you’re building this cybersecurity and technology reservoir from which they can draw. And so that’s always helpful from the community’s perspective, not just the student’s perspective. So thank you for that.
Lewis Heuermann:
Absolutely.
Steven Bowcut:
All right, so presuming, assuming, and I’m sure that some of these students are going to come and they’re just going to have so much fun getting their bachelor’s degree, that they’re going to want to keep going, right? They want more fun in the classroom.
So talk to us about what’s available. You have some kind of a BS/MS fast track thing, an MS in computer science. Are there doctoral studies and internships and research? For those who want to continue their cybersecurity or technology education at Texas A&M and Corpus Christi, what’s available?
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, we have a lot of advanced education opportunities here. We have a master’s in computer science that you can focus cybersecurity on. We have a doctoral program also in computer science where you can do focused research in these areas.
TAMU-CC is also home of the ARI or the Augmented Research Institute, our autonomous research institute, which is where our drones are. So we have a whole drone research program here. I believe it’s one of the top programs in the state and possibly in the nation. And that’s where a lot of folks focus their research on is in drones and how drones operate, how autonomous drones operate both individually and in a swarm.
And of course, from the cybersecurity angle, we’ve done demonstrations and projects where we can show that through, again, that $3 chip, we can actually impact safe drone flight operation if the drone is not built properly and configured properly.
And so that comes into a lot of different industries, agriculture being one that a lot of people don’t think about. We deal with a lot of cybersecurity, a lot of drones in agriculture, and that is just really a up and coming demanding industry that I think a lot of students are going to really get excited about.
I know when I first started peeling back the hood a little bit on agriculture cyber and agricultural drones and things like that, just wow, what a fascinating, fascinating world. And again, it comes back to that. You don’t have to be smart, but you do have to be interested because when you’re interested, you’re going to go find the thing that gets you curious. And then if you’re lucky, you’ll find the thing that wakes you up, not that you wake up for.
Steven Bowcut:
That’s so interesting. I like the example of agriculture because that is one of those industries where if you haven’t peaked under the hood and taken a look at it, it has changed so much. I mean, these self-driving tractors and the drones that fly around and examine the ground and what the moisture content level is and all the things that they need. And those are all network-based technology that has to be protected. So that’s excellent.
All right, so we’re out of time, but I want to end with one, we’d like to end with an advice type question. So what advice would you give to let’s say a high school student, or it could be someone that’s been in community college or they’re changing careers, but they’re just beginning this cybersecurity, looking into cybersecurity to see if this is the thing for them. So what do they need to do to prepare for this field?
So if I’m a high school student and I’m thinking, yeah, cybersecurity would be good for me, I’m interested in that, I’m curious as you’ve described, are the things that I should be doing? Should I be taking technology or math classes or what?
Lewis Heuermann:
Yeah, it’s anything that you can do to expose yourself to technology is always helpful. I’m a big fan of Raspberry Pis. I’m a big fan of Arduino’s microcontrollers. They’re cheap. You can get one for $7. They’re free to program. Most things on it are open source. There’s other chips that you can get on Amazon, like the C6, the Shells from C Technologies.
These are all $3 to $5 chips that you can really do a lot of fun stuff on and just get it in play. Just get it in play. The advice I would have for a lot of folks, especially if you’re in high school or you’re a career changer or you’re early in college, don’t get too focused on what you’re going to major in. I see a lot of folks really get hyper-focused on what’s my major going to be? Is that the right major?
Can I get a job if that’s my major? The bottom line is what you pick up in your study is what’s going to build your career. And so whether that’s a computer science degree or a cybersecurity degree, it’s what you study. And I’ve had students show up on day one of their cyber education and say, “I am going to be this. I am here to learn this.” And by the time I watch them graduate four years later, they are completely different.
They have gone in a completely different direction because in one of my classes at some point they discovered something they had never even knew existed and they said, “Oh, wow.” And they dug into that and dug in and dug in and got curious. And that’s when they discovered an entire direction they didn’t even have the words for on day one. And so for you, if you’re sitting out there right now and you’re just locked on, what I call analysis paralysis and you just don’t know what you’re going to do and what you’re going to be, I say, “Don’t worry about it.
Just get curious about something and technology and just dig into it and just keep following that curiosity and you’re going to build that muscle of curiosity and that’s what’s going to get you into our program and build you stronger. And you’re just going to just every day, you’re just going to have so much fun that you’re going to look backwards after four years. You’re going to go, oh man, I thought I knew on day one. Now I’m just so much more curious.” And that’s what’s going to excite you.
Steven Bowcut:
Oh, that is such good advice. I think so many of us, and I know I was like that. I didn’t really know what wakes me up until I had some of my general education and experimented with a few things and then I started really, this really wakes me up. So awesome. That’s great advice.
All right, Lewis, thank you for joining me on the podcast and helping our listeners to understand cybersecurity education opportunities available at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. It’s been fun. I appreciate it. I
Lewis Heuermann:
I appreciate it. I had fun.
Steven Bowcut:
And for our listeners, if you’d like to learn more about the Bachelor’s of Science in computer science with the cybersecurity infrastructure option that we’ve talked about or the Islander Cyber Society that we’ve talked about or the other graduate programs that we’ve mentioned, you can visit Texas A&M University Corpus Christi at their website, which is T-A-M-U-C-C, Tamucc.edu. And you can also find more information about cybersecurity degrees, certifications, scholarships, and career pathways at cybersecurityguide.org.
Thank you for listening to the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast. I’m your host, Steven Bowcut, and we hope that you’ll join us again for another conversation about cybersecurity education and the many ways that you can prepare for a career in this important and rapidly evolving field.