“A hacker saw my financials recently…they felt bad for me and set up a Go Fund me page.”
We can chuckle at this cyber humor, however, cyber crime is a serious problem in today’s world. Hackers pose a grave threat to a nation’s infrastructure at any given time. To combat these crimes, Cyber Security/Information Assurance is a booming industry in today’s world. Now a group of Boerne students hope to make a difference in a few years as they begin their journey in Boerne’s Cyber Security Program in partnership with Northwest Vista College.
Boerne ISD’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) is an innovative, open-enrollment high school focusing on cyber security. This program of study allows students an opportunity to receive both a high school diploma and a credential and/or an associate degree. The hallmark of the P-TECH model is its career focus and the provision of work-based education.
Approximately 50 Boerne high school students visited NVC on July 18 to get a feel for their new college and the services they are entitled to outside of their high school. All are dual credit students and will start their program in the fall semester. Students will begin with the basics of information technology systems and networks and move to the more difficult skills of understanding operating systems and how they are built and managed, the fundamentals of computer networking and cloud computing, and will learn how to build and evaluate network architecture. All of these skills are the prerequisites to learning how data travels across networks and how hackers infiltrate networks.
These Boerne students will at one point become this country’s first line of defense in cyber security.
By Patrick R. Fontenot
NVC Dean, Academic Support Services
