FOR a regional competition last spring, eight students from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, spent six months of Saturdays practicing how to defend a typical business computer network from attacks. Then, over two grueling days, they outscored teams from five other schools at blocking worms and other efforts to disrupt their e-mail and Internet systems.
For the six seniors in the group, all in computer information systems, the victory was even sweeter. Boeing, the giant aerospace and military company, offered them jobs.
Boeing.s decision to snap up all the graduates on the team shows how urgent the demand for computer-security experts has become, and helps explain why colleges are scrambling to add courses and specialized degrees in the once-exotic field.
In fact, as attacks on vital computer systems proliferate, surveys show a serious shortage of talent to combat them. Banks, military contractors and software companies, along with federal agencies, are looking for .cyber ninjas. to fend off a sophisticated array of hackers, from criminals stealing credit card numbers to potential military adversaries.
.There is a huge demand, and a lot more schools have created programs,. says Nasir Memon, a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn. .But to be honest, we.re still not producing enough students..
Mr. Memon.s school created a master.s degree in cybersecurity last fall. So did Indiana University, whose security degree is in .informatics,. an academic field in which students find new uses for information technology. Starting in the fall, Georgia Tech will offer a master.s degree in information security online; the program is aimed at computer professionals who want to learn to deal with computer threats. N.Y.U. Poly, whose master.s program is also online, prefers students with bachelor.s degrees in computers, math, science or engineering. But it will consider career changers who will take basic computer classes. Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh; Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind.; and George Mason in Fairfax, Va., are among other universities with master.s programs in cybersecurity.
Jeffrey M. Henbest, one of the Cal Poly students hired by Boeing, says cybersecurity is seen at his school .as the most technically demanding field, kind of like the fighter pilot of the information technology industry..
While perhaps just a few thousand jobs are available now, government officials involved in cybersecurity expect the number to grow rapidly. (Professor Memon says pay starts at $50,000 with a bachelor.s, $60,000 to $80,000 with a master.s.)
One concern, says Dale W. Meyerrose, the vice president for cyberprograms at the Harris Corporation, a military contractor, is the shortage of young Americans interested in pursuing careers involving math and science.
But Barbara G. Fast, Boeing.s vice president for cybersolutions, says that young people.s familiarity with posting and chatting, and the fascination with virtual gaming, could make cybersecurity seem like fun. In puzzling out security problems, she says, it can be hard to imagine how far a computer network extends and who the intruders might be.
.It.s a real, three-dimensional, visualization challenge that we have..