By Kaylee Hayes | Reporter
It’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and despite humble beginnings, Baylor’s cybersecurity team hopes to grow alongside the cyber industry and eventually emerge at the frontier.
Dr. David Grover, the senior director for cyber initiatives and Baylor alumnus, emphasized the abundant job growth in cybersecurity and the importance of cybersecurity in the modern day.
“Cybersecurity is in everything and will be part of every aspect of life going forward,” Grover said. “In Texas alone, there are 42,000 open jobs in cybersecurity, with 514,000 open positions nationwide. There are opportunities in government, healthcare, insurance and every industry, so if you have an interest in computer systems or protecting data, cybersecurity is the way of the future.”
Baylor’s Cybersecurity Club is open to all majors and consists also of the Cybersecurity team, which competes nationally, emphasizing community and mentorship.
This month, the club will bring multiple guest speakers to talk on campus, including Biju Matthew, director of logistics security at Amazon, and Kevin Smith, senior cybersecurity manager at Textron.
In addition to the guest speakers coming to talk on campus, the club will host “Hack Week,” an asynchronous individual cybersecurity competition open to all students, Oct. 27 through 30.
Northport, N.Y., senior and Cybersecurity Club President Peter Whitcomb said although recently chartered by Baylor, the club has actually been operating on campus for a while.
Whitcomb explained how the Cybersecurity Club offers unique opportunities such as mentorship, workshops that range across skill levels and competitive teams to join. This club has fostered a sense of community within the cyber department, he said.
“I was a mentee last year, and I am still close with my mentor,” Whitcomb said.
Waco junior Ethan Vowels is the captain of Baylor’s competitive cybersecurity team and secretary of the Cybersecurity Club at Baylor.
“For anyone who is interested, there is a club on campus, and the whole club is to connect people into the field and get people started at a basic level,” Vowels said.
Baylor added a cybersecurity major two years ago; however, both Vowels and Whitcomb began their academic careers at Baylor before the major was offered, when there was only a cybersecurity concentration option for computer science students.
“We helped write some of the syllabi for the initial classes and the program development,” Vowels said.
According to Grover, Baylor’s dive into cybersecurity comes after receiving a government grant in 2023 to fund cybersecurity research and education.
“Our goal is to expand Baylor’s cyber offerings by growing our academic program, expanding the K-12 pathway program beyond Region 12 to all of Texas, growing industry partnerships and bringing more state resources and industry to Central Texas,” Grover said. “We want to be the pathway and leader in expanding cyber knowledge across the board.”
Grover emphasized that cybersecurity is not just for IT jobs and that small businesses and large corporations alike, across every field, have a need for more cybersecurity measures.
“Think about connected cars — if someone accesses your car’s Wi-Fi, they could control braking systems, steering systems or the radio remotely,” Grover said. “Target famously had a cyberattack through their thermostat. Cybersecurity is in everything, part of every aspect of your life; we are defined by our data and information.”
