Boise State Cybersecurity Institute Partners with Sophos to Expand Experiential Learning with Latest EDR Solutions

Boise State University’s Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity has announced a new partnership with cybersecurity-as-a-service provider Sophos, giving Boise State access to Sophos’ endpoint security offerings and adding the latest technology to students' experiential learning, according to a news release.

According to the agreement, the Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity’s Cyberdome, which provides cybersecurity services to Idaho organizations, will add Sophos’ Intercept X solution with extended detection and response features to Cyberdome’s service offerings. 

The Cyberdome gives Idaho higher ed students a real-life cybersecurity education and hands-on practice as students participate in providing cybersecurity services to rural Idaho school districts, counties, and cities, Boise State said. Cyberdome students, from universities and colleges across Idaho, “graduate from the program with critical real-world experience to advance into professional cybersecurity specialist’s positions.”

Sophos said its Intercept X with XDR solution “will be used by students to monitor client assets, detect threats from cyber adversaries, and report to clients on possible avenues of exploitation.” 

Cyberdome’s work includes protecting networks at rural K–12 school districts, helping rural counties with election system security, and protecting critical rural city systems that support water and electric districts throughout Idaho. In the first half of 2023, the university said, Cyberdome students “monitored over 5,000 assets, analyzed over 53,000 possible attacks and notified clients of 350 potential real-time attacks.” 

“This partnership supports two critical issues in cybersecurity,” said Joe Levy, president and chief technology officer at Sophos. “First, our Sophos Intercept X endpoint solution will be deployed to different sized organizations around Idaho, including those in rural areas, to help them defend against data breaches, ransomware and other cyberattacks. … 

“Second, there is a worldwide cybersecurity skills gap today, and by helping students with the program’s hands-on cybersecurity training, we’re helping to equip the next generation of the cybersecurity workforce.”

According a recent workforce report in CIO magazine, “The cyber skills shortage is not going away anytime soon, despite the progress we are making as an industry to attract new talent.” A recent ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study showed that the talent gap in cybersecurity is now double the size of the total workforce in North America.

The partnership is made possible in part by grants from the Idaho Global Entrepreneurship Mission’s Higher Education Research Council and Idaho’s Workforce Development Council, according to a news release.

Learn more at BoiseState.edu and Sophos.com.

About the Author

Kristal Kuykendall is editor, 1105 Media Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].


Featured

  • Training the Next Generation of Space Cybersecurity Experts

    CT asked Scott Shackelford, Indiana University professor of law and director of the Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, about the possible emergence of space cybersecurity as a separate field that would support changing practices and foster future space cybersecurity leaders.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • AI microchip, a cybersecurity shield with a lock, a dollar coin, and a laptop with financial graphs connected by dotted lines

    Survey: Generative AI Surpasses Cybersecurity in 2025 Tech Budgets

    Global IT leaders are placing bigger bets on generative artificial intelligence than cybersecurity in 2025, according to new research by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

  • university building surrounded by icons for AI, checklists, and data governance

    Improving AI Governance for Stronger University Compliance and Innovation

    AI can generate valuable insights for higher education institutions and it can be used to enhance the teaching process itself. The caveat is that this can only be achieved when universities adopt a strategic and proactive set of data and process management policies for their use of AI.