In Arizona, Glendale Community College Cybersecurity Program Director Rachelle Hall estimates at least 9,900 cybersecurity positions are waiting to be filled statewide. Its Gaucho Security Operations Center (GSOC), a nonprofit that she directs, established in 2023, is training students to fill the cyber workforce gap — providing them the practical experience they will need to find jobs in the field and offering cybersecurity services to two cities and a school district.
Angelo State University (ASU) in San Angelo, Texas, has a slightly older program launched in January 2023, and it monitors more than 22,000 endpoints according to a recent National Association of Counties (NACo) webinar. Newest of the three, the University of South Carolina Aiken Regional Security Operations Center (RSOC) launched in March 2024 and is already partnering with nonprofits, municipalities and school districts in the western part of the state.
Based in higher education, these security operations centers have emerged as innovation hubs at the intersection of education, cybersecurity and community service. They offer internships and real-world experience to university and community college students, and their programs are a fresh approach to addressing the critical shortage of cybersecurity professionals while simultaneously bolstering the digital defenses of vulnerable communities. These aren’t just student labs — they are providers of cybersecurity services for smaller municipalities, school districts and some nonprofits that lack the human and financial resources required to run robust programs.
“One of the main problems we were trying to solve is, we were graduating students in cyber, but students couldn’t get jobs in the field because they didn’t have any experience,” Hall said. “What we did was we brought the experience to them, so by the time they graduate with us, they have over 300 hours of experiential learning in a live security operations center. … We wanted to bridge that gap between academia and the workplace.”
ARIZONA EYES CYBER CENTER NETWORK
Students in the GSOC internship earn their degrees while learning about cybersecurity planning, threat detection and software, Hall said. About 21 have finished the program, 12 are enrolled this semester, and several graduates are now working in the public sector. Officials use the nationally supported CyberSeek dashboard to assist students in planning career paths and highlight available jobs.
“The intention here is twofold — we need cyber talent now, or local governments often don’t have headcount or funding, but they still need to defend themselves from cyber attacks,” state CISO Ryan Murray said via email. “In addition, we’re continuing to hear that new grads with cyber degrees are just not finding jobs, in part because of what we’re hearing from employers, which is that no one is interested in hiring entry-level talent with no hands-on experience right now.”
Government Technology/David Kidd
The GSOC program is buoyed by four years of recently received funding from the state — and will soon expand under the guidance of the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, Murray, who is the state’s deputy director of homeland security, confirmed. State officials are now working to start an SOC at Pima Community College in Tucson, as well as one other college later this year.
“We’re looking to replicate this across the entire state,” Murray said, indicating the goal is to stand up three SOCs this year, five total within five years — and, ultimately, to have an RSOC at each of the state’s 10 community college districts.
STATE FUNDING, SUPPORT ARE VITAL
State support is a key sustainer for these efforts. In Texas, the state stood up its RSOC program under the purview of the Department of Information Resources to aid rural areas with cybersecurity coverage, and plans to eventually cover 12 regions statewide.
The ASU RSOC, its first, has graduated 60 students and has 33 more in various stages of its program, university speakers said during the recent NACo webinar. Affiliated with the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Cyber Intelligence, Innovation and Security Studies, it, too, has been designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. Students there watch 22,500 endpoints and counting, alongside skilled professional staff. Clients include school districts, small police departments, local governments and the university’s home city of San Angelo, for a total of 52 customers.
Most of our graduates are finding jobs within six months to a year, and these aren’t entry-level jobs. They're finding jobs that are a little bit higher up the food chain.
The RSOC is tasked with real-time network security monitoring, alerts and guidance for defeating security threats, immediate response to remote and on-site incidents, guiding policy and planning for clients and providing educational opportunities. Michael Wyatt of Deloitte, who joined university Provost Donald Topliff and CIO Doug Fox for the webinar, said it fills a crucial niche for school districts or small municipalities that may not have an IT department or be able to outsource those services. When Angelo State University was chosen to house the first RSOC, Deloitte consulted on its activation.
“So you have workforce development, you have ... cybersecurity by Texans,” said Wyatt, who is a principal and the global identity offering leader for Deloitte's cyber and strategic risk practice. “You've got the last mile, these ... rural areas that typically don't have enough funding or talent to handle taking care of all the cybersecurity needs themselves, and getting those economies of scale and working with an institution that's trusted — a local, trusted institution.” State funding lets the RSOC resolve those needs free of charge.
PARTNERING HELPS STUDENTS, MUNIS
The RSOC in San Angelo is on live watch 24/7/365, unlike programs at Glendale Community College and the University of South Carolina Aiken. USC Aiken, per its website, also has NSA academic excellence designation, and is slated to house a $30 million-plus South Carolina National Guard cybersecurity complex. Its RSOC offers similar services to Arizona's center, including pre-incident planning and assessment, network scans and maintenance, incident intervention and investigation and recovery assistance. Students work with experienced IT personnel and university faculty to provide “near round-the-clock monitoring,” according to its website.
RSOC staff are already working with rural South Carolina municipalities and villages, and with a school district on incident response planning, the university’s IT Director Chris Clark said. The relationships offer something crucial to both sides.
“They’re partners because we provide them with resources for making sure that they have a good security policy in place, that they have good procedures in place and that we help follow up all of that,” Clark said. “Then, [the partners] provide our students with the opportunity to expand their experience while they’re here.” State support, he added, has been crucial.
“We would not be able to scale this program as quickly without the support of the Aiken legislative delegation and, overall, the South Carolina House,” Clark said. “We've been the beneficiary of some state-funded grants, some budget line items in the past couple of years.”
RESULTS HIGHLIGHT CONNECTIONS MADE
Though still relatively new, all three initiatives have graduated students and sent them into the professional workforce. In South Carolina, school officials are finding they land ahead of graduates in other fields who might not qualify for more advanced positions.
“Most of our graduates are finding jobs within six months to a year, and these aren’t entry-level jobs,” Clark said. “They're finding jobs that are a little bit higher up the food chain.”
Hall, in Glendale, Ariz., said she finds it gratifying to see students’ confidence grow as their internships progress. Personally reporting out to clients and vendors is part of their work, and their presentation improvements, she said, are noticeable over time.
“If you see [students] the first time they report, they’re kind of [shy]. They don’t want to talk. They’re very quiet, but by the end of the semester they’re standing up,” she said. “They’ve got stats going up, they’ve got graphs going up on the screen. It is truly amazing to see how much they grow.”
And in Texas, officials are finding some of their RSOC’s professional-level support falls into the category of home-grown talent.
“We actually have some of the cyber analysts [in the SOC] that are employed that were students, and we have other students that have gone on,” said Topliff, the ASU provost. “We have one that is the cybersecurity director for a large school district in the state of Florida.”
