By James Laird | Reporter
Cybersecurity Club at Baylor is a club that allows students to grow in their cybersecurity knowledge and skills while also providing mentorship opportunities to its members. The club also feeds into a competition team, the Baylor Cybersecurity Team, that is nationally ranked and competes against other schools across the country.
The club has a lot of computer science majors, but is open to anyone who is passionate about cybersecurity, Dallas senior and vice president of Cybersecurity Club Brendon Kofink said.
“So it’s really good for networking, it’s really good for learning skills, for actually, like boots on the ground, instead of just classroom knowledge,” Kofink said. “You’re doing it for real, and that’s awesome.”
Mentorship is a large part of cybersecurity at Baylor, according to Kofink, as older members in the club are able to provide students with cybersecurity insight, help with school and more.
“I mentor like five or six people,” Kofink said. “I’m a senior, and they’re anywhere from freshmen to juniors. And I just teach them what I know, and then I tell them about the classes I’ve taken and how I got through them. I teach them about cybersecurity concepts, I teach them about how to compete in competitions. And a lot of our seniors in the club do the same thing.”
The competition team competes in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and represents Baylor on a national stage but only eight members compete. On the National Cyber League rankings, the Baylor cyber team is ranked No. 13 in the country out of 475 teams and all members are allowed to compete.
“They set you in a room with tons of computers, and there’s professional hackers that try and get into your computers, and you have to lock them out, which is really fun,” Kofink said. “So we got second in that and brought home a trophy, and we’re going on to the next level.”
Matt Homan, information systems masters candidate and president of Cybersecurity Club, said the club and competition team have been really helpful in helping him secure his cybersecurity skills and job, even though he was not a computer science major.
“It basically set me up with the skills I need to distinguish myself from other people that are going for the jobs that I’m going for,” Homan said. “It gives you that real life experience that you don’t get from a degree, you don’t get from a major, from classes, and it really sets you apart and gets you the job that you want.”
Mary Chandler, senior academic adviser in the School of Engineering and Computer Science and Cybersecurity Club adviser, believes the club sets students up for current and future success in their studies and field of interest.
“I just think that having that kind of skill and having that experience not only helps them with their classes now, but it will help them as they move into their professional roles,” Chandler said.
Chandler believes Cybersecurity Club and other organizations provide valuable experiences for students and admires the work they do for each other and showcasing Baylor.
“What I love about them is they’re always doing things to better themselves, setting themselves apart as Baylor, showing off that they have the skills and what it takes to compete at these high level competitions, and kind of taking the step and doing something new,” Chandler said. “So I think the sky’s the limit on what they can do.”
