May 1st was Cyber Night at the CCRI Warwick Campus. It is the biggest event of the year for our Club. We have several guest speakers, and several businesses and colleges showed up to talk about what they are offering in terms of careers and offerings to continue education.
Among guest speakers we had State Senator Lou DiPalma and the Adjutant General for RI Christopher P. Callahan, as well as speakers from most of the organizations and colleges attending, including URI, Johnson and Wales University, the South Eastern New England Defense Industry Alliance (SENEDIA), Rite-Solutions, and SEACORP among others.
After introductions were done by Professor Mike Kelly and the College President, Lou DiPalma was the first to speak. He spoke about his experience working at the highest level on security and compared Cyber Security to what got him interested in this field, going to the Moon.
General Callahan spoke after this about the importance of cybersecurity and how behind every incident, there is a human who has been hurt. He conveyed the importance of protecting our most secret information, and how instead of thinking in terms of “100,000 customers have had their data stolen” we should think in terms of “100,000 people have had their secrets exposed in a way that could hurt them.”
In addition, the majority of the Cyber Club was there and we had a table where we gave out the answers to the cipher we designed for the event. A webpage to do that with the ciphertext shown can be found here.
Many in the Cyber Club got several leads on potential jobs and transfers to a 4 year school. SENEDIA, SEACORP, Rite-Solutions, The National Guard, The Army, and The Air Force all had tables for which to learn about job opportunities. Johnson and Wales, as well as URI, had tables to talk about transfers as well. In the back there was a table from the RI Computer Museum as well that kind of went into the history of computers and the evolving needs of security.
Overall, it was eventful night, and was an honor to meet everyone as well as an excellent resource to network and collaborate. Several awards were given out to students on cyber night as well. I look forward to it next year.