Penn State Shenango Unveils New Cybersecurity Center

SHARON, Pa. – Penn State Shenango unveiled its new Information Technology Cybersecurity Center during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday at the Forker Lab building. 

Students, faculty, staff and administrators attended the event, along with local community leaders and regional cybersecurity professionals.

“What this brings to the school and to our students is monumental,” said Matthew DeMaria, Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations Program coordinator. 

The center will help support the existing cybersecurity curriculum by offering a closed-server environment where students and faculty can experiment with various forms of malware and viruses in a safe and secure way.

“We’re building a lot of critical thinking skills and creativity,” DeMaria said. “Through the creative minds of our students, we’re able to explore and try new things. It’s through that exploration – that’s how we find out what happens next. And this lab will give us the opportunity to do that in a safe space.”

The center also will allow students at Shenango to work directly with some of the more dangerous software being used by “threat actors” to explore not only how it works but find ways to understand and stop it. The resources in the center will also allow Shenango faculty members to conduct malware analytics research to find new ways of dealing with viruses that don’t have solutions yet.

“As technology continues to evolve, our ability to combat cyber threats must evolve as well. Our new Cybersecurity Center provides students and faculty here at Penn State Shenango with the resources they need to do just that,” Jo Anne Carrick, campus director and chief academic officer, said during the ceremony. “Because of this, our graduates will be uniquely prepared to enter the workforce with confidence knowing that they have had access to this space and its state-of-the-art resources.”

The center was made possible through a $50,000 contribution from Zekelman Industries, the parent company of Sharon Tube Co. in Farrell.

“I wish I was a student again and had this opportunity, because it is groundbreaking,” DeMaria said.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.