CyberWire Daily - What role does higher education play in cyber? [CISOP]

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Show Notes: Cybersecurity has continued to grow and mature as a field over the past decade which has given rise to numerous degree pathways across dozens of collegiate institutions; however, the value of these degrees has continued to be a topic of debate. In this episode of CISO Perspectives, host ⁠Kim Jones⁠ sits down with Dr. Lara Ferry, the Vice President of Research at Arizona State University, to explore higher education's role in cyber. Throughout the conversation, Lara and Kim will discuss the challenges facing degree programs, the disconnects between organizations and institutions, and how the gap can be better addressed. Want more CISO Perspectives?: Check out a companion ⁠⁠blog post⁠⁠ by our very own Ethan Cook, where he breaks down key insights, shares behind-the-scenes context, and highlights research that complements this episode. It’s the perfect follow-up if you’re curious about the cyber talent crunch and how we can reshape the ecosystem for future professionals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. This exclusive N2K Pro subscriber-only episode of CISO Perspectives has been unlocked for all Cyberwire listeners through the generous support of Meter, building full-stack zero-trust networks from the ground up. Trusted by security and network leaders everywhere, meter delivers fast, secure by design, and scalable connectivity without the frustration, friction, complexity, and calm. of managing an endless proliferation of vendors and tools. Meter gives your enterprise a complete networking stack, secure wired, wireless, and cellular in one integrated solution built for performance, resilience, and scale. Go to meter.com slash CISOP today to learn more and book your demo.

That's METER.com slash CISOP. Welcome to CISO Perspectives. I'm Kimmy Jones, and I'm thrilled that you're here for this season's journey. We're bringing the deep conversations out of the conference, or more realistically, the conference bar, and tackling a single complex issue from every conceivable angle across a multi-episode arc. As we continue our inaugural season,

we're examining the challenges surrounding the cyber talent ecosystem. Today we explore the question. question, what role does higher education play in cyber? Let's get into it. Do I need to go to college to get into cybersecurity? This is by far the most asked question by folks considering a cybersecurity career, and it is also a source of contention among cyber professionals. The college or no college debate has become almost religious within the cyber community. On one side, there are the arguments that real-world experience should be what we measure talent against, or when simplified, prioritizing what a person has done versus what they have learned. A college-educated individual

who has never set up a network, configured a server in the cloud, or looked for vulnerabilities using open-source tools is not as valuable as a non-degraded individual who has done any or all of the above. Moreover, unless you want to get into management where a degree is more valued, there's no need to incur student debt as most degrees provide minimum value in cybersecurity. On the other side of the debate, people argue that college improves critical thinking skills. Critical thinking requires a breadth of knowledge and experience beyond one narrow field. a grounding in science, history, social sciences, provides context for making decisions. As cyber professionals are often asked to come up with innovative and creative solutions to vexing problems,

the ability to think critically is key for out-of-the-box solutions. College when an option is a choice point. At this point, there is so much rhetoric and debate around the importance or non-important, importance of academia, that any definitive answer given here would most likely be dissected to support one side or the other. Rather than oversimplify the question into a yes-no answer, I will focus on the relevant themes future cyber warriors need to hone in on. One, reality matters, but I really don't care how you come across it.

underground forums and dark websites aren't the only places to learn about the realities of cyber. And contrary to what you might hear from some of the more vocal naysayers out there, college can be a place to experience reality-based training. We discussed how many universities are injecting reality into their curricula in previous episodes. Two, reality matters. so understand the realities of the market and society before you choose a path. I once met a young African-American male who was looking to move into cybersecurity. He was considering whether or not to go to college.

I can afford it, he said to me, without taking on debt, but unless you can convince me it's worth it, I've no intention of going. I stared at the young man incredulously. So, I said, is one black black person. black man to another, let me get this straight. In a career profession where people who look like us make up less than 15% of the population, you're going to give folks an excuse not to hire you when you have the means to do otherwise. As much as I would love it to be otherwise, diversity remains a problem within cybersecurity. While many folks like myself, an organization

such as cybercity are working diligently to fix this situation, the reality is that we're not there yet. Three, reality matters. So understand the disconnect between what the market says it is doing and what it is actually doing. A few years ago, I created a survey on the Gartner Peer Community networking platform. In this survey, I polled over 150 cyber hiring manager, regarding their education requirements for entry-level cyber professionals.

The results? 53% of respondents required at least a four-year bachelor's degree, with 50% of that number requiring that degree to be in a technical field. Another 9% required at least an associate degree, and only 10% of respondents were willing to hire entry-level cybersecurity professionals with only a high school diploma. While there are jobs available in cybersecurity to those without degrees, the numbers seem to indicate that your odds are significantly better if you attend college.

Four, reality matters, so remember that the college decision is not a binary one. If the cost of college is out of reach for you, but something you desire, consider one of the many excellent community college programs that have been built around NSA standards. Community colleges offer full or part-time enrollment options at really affordable price points. Many of these same institutions have created transfer pathways to nearby four-year institutions to ensure that transitioning to a bachelor's degree program is efficient and easy. It is not always necessary to attend college as a consecutive, uninterrupted block of time. You can go to work, go back to school, work some more,

etc, as needed, based upon your financial, personal, and career realities. And five, reality matters, so remember the realities of the hiring pyramid. If college is something you cannot do or just do not wish to do, the reality is that you must make yourself as desirable a hire as possible. I like to talk to folks about what I call the hiring pyramid. Those at the top of the pyramid with a degree and some type of certification are the most sought-after candidates, whereas those at the bottom with neither will have the most challenges. While a degree seems to be more valued than a certification in some arenas,

if a degree is not in your future than pursuing some type of entry-level certification to provide proof of your knowledge and or skills is critical. Certifications provide an employer with insights into your capabilities. If even certifications are not an option, I would encourage any entry into the field to publish their work via blogs and industry journals as much as possible. Network with other cyber professionals via joining professional organizations and or attending security conferences,

and conduct research into security flaws and vulnerabilities to participate in corporate Bug-Bonte programs. The decision to add a college degree to your resume is a personal one. You will need to spend time talking with industry folks to better understand the requirements and demands of jobs that you are interested in, remembering that it's all not just pen testing and hacking. If promotion along a particular path,

or into a particular job is something you desire, educate yourself on the requirements and ensure that you are already the best candidate when that next career opportunity becomes available. Be open to possible twists and turns that might take you along a path you never predicted, but brings you personal and professional fulfillment. My two cents. I'm excited to welcome Dr. Laura Ferry to our conversation today. Laura is a leader in higher education and someone who's deeply involved in how universities are shaping the future of cybersecurity from research to talent development. Today we are discussing what role does higher education play in cyber?

So my name is Laura Heferi, as you said. I've been at Arizona State University since 2010. I got to know you, Kim, you know, through my role when I was a school director that offered or launched in a university. offered a degree in cybersecurity in some related fields. And so it initially got a crash course in that space. But now it is a space where I find myself often, not just in sort of degree offerings, but now that I'm the vice president of research here at ASU, I find myself being the one faced with cybersecurity concerns related to research security and collaborating with

a mutual friend of ours, who's the CSO here at ASU, to make sure that the research is secure and that we are, you know, leading the way in terms of meeting the requirements of our partners, contractors, federal government, and so on. So cybersecurity has come to be a thing I know and love. I think you're amazing, but you know that. Anyway, it's worth the, I think, the audience understanding just in terms of not only the diversity of background that you bring to the equation, but one of the things that I would. wanted to spend this podcast talking about.

If I were to break it down, there are probably two halves of this podcast. One half is talking about, for lack of a better term, the mechanics of academia. Because one of the things that I found, and it's not just because I went to a non-traditional university, aka West Point, but I didn't understand the mechanics as to how the courses worked, how courses were built, et cetera, and some of the challenges and hoops that you have to go through to put together new programs, even a new course within the environments. And then I want to talk about that controversial big air quotes topic here regarding the value of a four-year education in general. And some of the things that I do not believe our audience understands that universities in general,

and ASU and specific, have done to address that problem regarding the practicality and the utility of that four-year degree. So, and you recall this 10 years ago, believe it's been 10 years, 10 years ago when, you know, I came to ASU and said, you know, we said, we're going to build the program. The mechanics associated with an accredited college or university creating courses and creating programs is that something I don't think industry fully understands. Could you give us a 10,000-foot view of that for my audience? Absolutely. And, you know, I'll speak to some issues that I know you and I ran into, but, you know, interrupt me or, you know, ask me to elaborate or include things that I might

be missing. But, you know, the creation of even just a course in the university setting it's not that it's overly complicated, it's that the course needs to be matrixed in with other courses, right, so that we make sure whatever we're attempting to convey in the course, whatever course is supposed to become before that, the students get what they need to flow in, and whatever learning objectives they're supposed to meet and take away from the course once they complete it flows into something else, right? and so that there's value in it. And I know you might find this shocking,

but everything that a particular academic might want to cover, we do have a certain degree of academic freedom granted to us to cover what we think is important in courses based upon our disciplinary knowledge. But that doesn't excuse us for making sure that the courses are matrixed in that way, right? That there are clearly stated objectives so that the students understand how to succeed in the course

and what success looks like, right? And what they should be walking away with at the end of the course, they can point to it and say, I can do these things that should have some demonstrable advantage to them in the area that they're studying in their career field, right? So let me dig down on that one a little bit. In terms of what success looks like and what the learning objectives should be, in general,

and I know you do not speak for every academic institution out there, etc. But as a reference point, you're more knowledgeable and experienced than I am, and most of my audiences, what is academia's willingness and our challenge with input from industry regarding this is what we need? So success should include this. Right. I would say very, very open. I think in my conversations with folks, even at other universities, though I obviously don't know the ins and outs in the particulars, it is a strong desire of folks at universities to make sure that what we teach our students, we take responsibility for that and making sure that it is relevant and useful. It is what industry is looking for. But herein lies the rub, and you're going to get a giggle out of

this, because I know you've been on this journey with me. When we talk to our industry, partners, each one wants something different. Shocked, I am. Each company would like us to teach these students to code the way they code and to use the software they use and to be prepared to step into a job at their particular industry so that that company does not have to do any on-the-job training at all. The graduate reproduces ready to take a job at Company X, doing Company X things. Pretty sure I know the answer to this one.

So hopefully this is a softball. What is the challenge with that, or what is the challenge with us having that expectation from a university? Right. And I don't mean to paint everybody with a universal paintbrush. There's, of course, folks who get it. Yeah. But, you know, the problem with training a student to take a very specific role at a very specific company means that we have potentially trained them in a way that they cannot get a job at. any other company right right out the door. And even with that specific company, if we've trained

them to do what their company's doing right now, that person may not be able to pivot and grow with the company as the company changes the way they code, the software they use, whatever tool it is we're talking about, right? So as the company evolves and changes, the student we place at that company needs to be able to evolve and change too. Okay. So let's, let's, And that begins the segue, and we're probably going to end up bouncing back and forth. One of the things that academic institutions have been under fire for, and I'm not just talking political administration, et cetera. I'm talking the past decade, have been under fire for is too much theory, not enough reality at a hugely expensive cost. Now, one go down a tree branch that I want our viewers to understand regarding the cost pieces, et cetera,

I would love to begin to discuss what you would say to that for people who would criticize that or people who have the option to go to university and yet choose not to because they think it's meaningless. Talk to me. Yeah, I love this branch that we're on right now. And it is this balance of theory with the very practical hands-on doing the skill, making sure you know you can lift up the hood, see how it works, if you know what I mean. That balance is something we think about a lot. And I would say I do see this more and more across this degree area, at least, in other universities as well.

I see people listening, people understand that students need to not just, not just theorize, but know how to turn a wrench, if you will. One of the things we have here, and you'll see this other places as well, is this category called experiential learning, right? So in all ASU degrees, in fact, there is this experiential learning option. And in many degrees to include our cybersecurity degree, the experiential learning part is a required element in the And I would say that students who are looking at a university degree should look for a degree program that has that required experiential learning element. Are you seeing more universities, particularly within tech fields requiring this? I know you're not speaking, but in general. You're seeing more of that.

In general, I see this quite a lot. And part of it is because the industry has demanded it, of course, right? But part of it, too, is that we, in many cases, recognize the balance. We have actual practitioners like yourself teaching some of the courses balanced with some of the more theoretical folks like myself who've never been in the wild, right, balancing the more theoretical perspective. So it starts there, right, and translates all the way down to, you know, an internship, for example, where a student is working at a company doing the things.

But that requires, too, that the company meet us halfway and provide internships where the student is doing the things, right? not answering the phone and gathering coffee. Let's poke at that. And again, we're going all over, which is what we normally do. Let's poke at that a bit. What has been the responsiveness of this industry to providing internships and providing real internships?

And let's talk a little bit because I know ASU does a lot of rigor for this. Right. You know, ASU has rigor behind internship requirements. So first, let's talk about the rigor that you place regarding internship requirements. And then let's talk about the responsiveness you've seen and here's a heads up for gang or not seen regarding people willing to provide those. Talk to me. Right. The rigor comes from the fact that we're actually awarding academic credit for this internship experience, right? Like it will count towards their degree. That is our sign or our signal, if you will, to the folks engaged that we value this as a part of your degree. It is not do your courses and it is part of the degree. Now, because it bears credit, right, we're required by our border regions to ensure that this internship has a certain number of contact hours like a course does. It meets a certain set of learning objectives like a course does.

And so we enter into a written agreement called a student placement agreement with the internship host to ensure that there are stated learning objectives and that there are, is a measurement of the students sort of acumen relative to. those learning objectives by the time that is done. So there's a midterm meeting and an interim meeting, right? And not an overly cumbersome, but an actual sort of analysis and project. The student has a paper, the student has to hand at the end stating this is what I learned and this is what came of the time that I spent with this company. And so in those ways, we make sure that they aren't fetching coffee and answering phones during this interview. Have you ever imagined how you'd redesign and secure your network infrastructure if you start from scratch? What if you could build the hardware, firmware, and software with a vision of

frictionless integration, resilience, and scalability? What if you could turn complexity into simplicity? Forget about constant patching, streamline the number of vendors you use, reduce those ever-expanding costs, and instead spend your time focusing on helping your business and customers thrive. Meet Meeter, the company building full-stack zero-trust networks from the ground up with security at the core, at the edge, and everywhere in between. Meter designs, deploys, and manages everything in enterprise needs for fast, reliable, and secure connectivity. They eliminate the hidden costs and maintenance burdens, patching risks, and reduce the inefficiencies of traditional infrastructure. From wired, wireless, and cellular,

to routing, switching, firewalls, DNS security, and VPN, every year. layer is integrated, segmented, and continuously protected through a single unified platform. And because Meter provides networking as a service, enterprises avoid heavy capital expenses and unpredictable upgrade cycles. Meter even buys back your old infrastructure to make switching that much easier. Go to meter.com slash CISOP today to learn more about the future of secure networking and book your demo. That's M-E-T-E-R-com slash C-I-S-O-P.

What's been the responsiveness in terms of internships? Are you getting enough real internships to cover your cyber student base? And are those companies stepping up? Talk to me. I would say there's never enough. And as you know, it's a very popular degree and lots of students want to do cyber, which is a point I'll want to return to later. And so this internship piece is,

incredibly important, not just so that they're prepared for you all out there listening, but so the student knows this is what they want to do. We do have many companies that have stepped up, but they can't. Their issue is that they're carrying too much of the internship burden, right? They're carrying so much of the load, and we always need more companies who are willing to step up. And to, I guess maybe a marketing piece to add to the companies, you do not have to pay the student. They're getting academic credit for this. So that is the carrot in all of this.

You're aware, without getting into specifics, the story regarding me trying to get the attention for interns when I was a C-So of a Global 1,000 company of several universities and not being able to get response from that university to do what I needed to do. understand. So I guess the best question is how in general if someone says, I want to help, there are a lot of places where I don't see the university outreach to the community.

And there are a lot of places when the community goes to reach into the university, and I say this with all affection, you know, the level of bureaucracy that exists within various universities, and if I'm not in the right school or not in the right place, you know, you can get lost forever. And if I've got 156 things to do, that dog just ain't worth hunting for me. How do you tell us, how do we go about saying, I want to help? Where do I go? What do I do? Where should I, my starting point be? Yeah, a university, the size of Arizona State University in particular, we call this the challenge finding our front door. Yeah. That's, yeah.

And finding our front door can be a little bit challenging for folks. I would say the improvements we've tried to make in our space on our side is to create a very, most people are using the web these days, right, to at least find a name of somebody. Then they might follow up with a phone call or an email or whatever. So we've created, and this is in response to several sectors. You know, I would lump together cybersecurity, anything related to something related to semiconductors and microelectronics, you know, various tech-related degrees where we're using the term workforce development is a priority federally, locally, state level, right? How are we preparing

our youth and anybody for the jobs that are available now and into the future? And so this workforce development presence is now something you can find fairly easily. You can find a description of various ways to get engaged. If you are a company, you can find a description of various things to take advantage of if you are seeking training, and it doesn't necessarily mean just college degrees through the workforce development pages that we've developed on the site. I'm not claiming we've nailed this perfectly, but I'm claiming we are trying to coalesce that together and make it easier to find our front door.

So that's AIS you, and that's great to hear, to be brutally honest with you. in general, you know, I have listeners in many of the 50 states. I've got listeners in Australia. Sure. If someone says, I want to figure out how to, I know my university has a cyber program, I want to figure out how to get engaged to, you know, from an internship standpoint, from an advisory standpoint, what would you advise them to do? Right.

I would say, generally speaking, the best way to find a human being is to find the cybersecurity program, like you said, this is the college or university or school that I would like to work with. Find their cybersecurity program. So the program will be housed, an ASU will be housed in a college, the College of Engineering, for example. And at this point, you'll want to find that degree program, find out where it's housed, and then find the leadership of that college. Find the school director would be a title you're looking for, or department chair, or even the dean. find that name and send that person a note and say, I'm trying to get involved.

I have open positions where I would like to take interns from your program. Tell me who to talk to. Fantastic. A couple of the things I want to hit, but I want to go back down that point you talked about about people wanting to enter the program. You said you wanted to come back to that. Talk to me.

Yeah, I think we're at a particularly important moment in time where the value of a university is being challenged, not just in cybersecurity space, but everywhere. And I want to be really forthcoming and admitting this is a reputation we have unfortunately earned. We meaning universities in general. We have sat back on our laurels in our ivory towers and said, just trust us. We're doing great things. We're helping the young people think.

And that is true. I mean, I'm very much in favor of helping young people to learn how to think, but we haven't taken it upon ourselves to explain the value of a university degree and to explain the ways in which we are trying to adapt and change and meet modern demands, but we're not communicating that well. We do recognize that the workforce is changing. We do recognize that students shouldn't be asked to spend five, six years at university and graduate in mountains of debt and take a job there and where they may not be able to pay that debt off for 30 years. Those are things we're completely aware of and we have taken really proactive measures to change, but we haven't communicated

the change well. And therefore, we weren't fabrication. Yeah, give me two examples from ASU. Or more if you have them because I, and again, I have the advantage we've had this conversation. Well, we've run into this one, right? Here's two examples from ASU. I'm going to compare myself as a college student to college students now. When I was in college at a university in Arizona to remain unnamed, I'll never tell. Went to sign up for my freshman courses and the freshman English class I needed was full and was told that's just normal. You're not going to be able to take freshman English until you're a sophomore, and it'll probably take you five years to graduate from here. And that's just not acceptable any longer.

You need to be able to graduate in four years. And we make sure that students are on track to do that by making sure there are enough sections of a course open. And making sure we mark certain courses is what we call critical tracking courses. That means advising is going to check in with you at that point in your degree program, if they haven't heard from you regularly already, to say, are you on track to graduate on time? because we have a burden to taxpayers and to the students and to their families. If our students are on Pell Grants and more than half of our students are, we need to make sure they graduate on time and that they graduate ready to enter the workforce. That's a responsibility we don't hold lightly.

Now, the other example I want to point out, and you and I have run into this one because we talk and we talked about it in this podcast too, is, you know, adding courses in so that students get a experience, well, that is great, except for the more courses we add, the longer it takes to graduate, right? So we are beholden to not put in more than 120 credit hours into a degree. That is the number you can reasonably finish at 30 credit hours a year times four years, right? And so whatever we put in, then we have to take something out. And that's the dance you and I have done to say, how do we add this element? We'll have to take out this other element. And there are elements in the degree we really want to keep in there because we also do want the student to learn how to think and communicate and talk. And one of the most painful experiences that I experienced when I was still

a school director was having a CSO like yourself, when we know and love, reach out to me to let me know that they were accepting interns. But this particular student, as we advise them to do, had reached out, started a communication, you know, seeking possible internship opportunities. And the letter was unprofessional, filled with bad grammar, you know, typical, not going to label it, didn't use punctuation or capital letters, right? And this colleague of ours reached out and said, this, I can't work with this, right? This is not friendly communication. This isn't a text. This needs to be professional communication. And let's add to that. And again, because of the communication, despite the fact that many professionals and many of my peers are saying these things are needed.

These are the examples. The very things you talked about are the examples of things that are, quote, unquote, wasting students' time. Right. Because I need them to learn how to run Wireshark or I need them to learn how to do this or that or the other thing in the environment. And adding another point to what you said about that balance. Because, yeah, it's, you know, the level of the puzzle is they're only 30. So if I put a course in and it's a three-critory hour course, I have to then find three credit hours to potentially take away.

Right. And what are we going to drop from the program? And it also has to be dropped at usually a certain level within the program. So if I'm putting a 300 course in, I've got to take a 300 course out, usually to try and balance that out within the environment. And that's on us. The burden of that is on us a little bit, too, to better explain this kind of conversation you and I are having, right?

Like we have competing priorities here and none is superior to the other. You know, getting the student out on time is incredibly important. Making sure they come out with a useful degree where they have practical experience is incredibly important, right? All of these things must occur and neither is higher than the other. So the burden is on us to explain, we hear your concern about students needing skill X. it's here in this place. And the problem, what we face is how to get the word out to the community around us. You know, is this meeting your degree your needs as the industry who might hire our graduates?

Is this meeting your needs? And we've had, as you know, because you've been a part of them roundtables and working groups and, you know, shared out with those community members. And we've gotten to the point where the people in the working. group, they're like, yes, yes, this is what I want. This is exactly what I want. And then you've experienced this to, okay, will you take my student as an intern? No.

No. In fact, I used that example in an earlier podcast. And you know the one I'm talking about. So I'm put a ship gears slightly. It is your nature to be very kind. doesn't mean you're less tough as nails, but still to be very kind. You've been very kind to my profession today. I'm going to ask you to stop for a second.

Stop being kind. Stop being kind because there is ownership that exists on this end of the table that bluntly I would contend we are not taking that make your job harder. So lay it on me. Yeah, I would agree that it is profoundly frustrating when I've met with a group of 15 representatives from different industry to say, okay, now, now have I built a degree you want? And now have I built a degree you want? And finally they all said, yes, you've built a degree you want. And then I can't place any interns at their industry.

So, you know, that is profoundly frustrating and sorry, it's still in my nature to be kind. Please stop. No, seriously, part of what I want is, and part of why I asked you here is I believe, and you know this, I believe there's mutual ownership here. And I also believe that there are parts of my profession that are very good at pointing fingers at everybody else and not taking ownership for the problem. I want them to hear from people in the trenches like yourself that this is a problem and why. So please, lay it on me. The dilemma is we really, really need people to be willing, companies to be willing, individuals to be willing, to host the interns or in other ways, apprenticeships, however that looks, to provide the students with the practical experience that then. will be demanded when they go to apply for the job.

And the dilemma the students face is that they go to apply for a job that requires a level of experience. They probably couldn't even get in an internship, right? So we are willing to meet you in the middle, but we need industry to take a chance on the students and place them in these internships so they can get the experience that the industry is looking for when they go to hire them. that getting any better or is it the same problem you and I were fighting in 2016? It is getting better, but it is not, we still have a gap to close. We still have students that are struggling

to find the placement. We still have students that, and good students, I'm not necessarily, I don't claim that every student that graduates is ready to hit the ground running with an internship, which is a point I'll return to also in a minute. But we have many, many, very good students that do have the communication skills that do have the background in the training and took the courses that were requested. And they just are getting crickets. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about two-year community college versus four-year community college. First part of this is an education for our users and something that I learned after being in the university system. Now, ASU creates pathways for folks coming in community college to go into four-year college.

But there are certain degrees that exist at the community college level that do not create a decent pathway to the four-year college. And there are two things I want to get to eventually as we talk about this. And we've seen this. you know, if you, you know, the ability for us to take that, I took Python my freshman year or my first year at the local community college, that credit doesn't transfer to the state college. In most states, it doesn't. And why? I want to make sure that our audience understands that. So talk to me, please.

Yeah. Let me address that on a couple of levels. So, so first of all, if the student knows that the community college is a stepping stone for them to, to a university degree, they should choose a program that they know maps the university. And at ASU being located in Maricopa County, we work with the Maricopa County Community College System, and we make sure that if you graduate with a particular degree from one of those universities, it maps into one of our programs. And in fact, you can place yourself, it's literally called a pathway.

You can place yourself on a pathway the day you start at the community college. And it gives you a portal, if you will, within the ASU system so that each course you complete at the community college, you see how it articulates at ASU. You see that it will articulate, for starters. You see how it articulates and you see how you're making simultaneous progress to your ASU degree while you're completing your community college degree. So that at the time you decide to move over, it should be seamless. You just come right over and all those courses are already in your degree program and count.

You can see how they count. And that's not to say you shouldn't enjoy your school experience and take some fun electives, but what folks sometimes don't recognize is that they may spend two years at a community college, but if they don't choose the courses that are designed to articulate, then they won't. Laura, as always, it is a joy to talk to you. Thank you for sharing your experience. and your knowledge and giving us some insight as to what it's like on your side of the street. And I really appreciate that.

Hey, thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. It's super fun. And that's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and for your support as N2K Pro subscribers. Your continued support enables us to keep making shows like this one. If you enjoyed today's conversation and are interested in learning more, please visit the CISO Perspectives page to read our accompanying blogger.

post which provides you with additional resources and analysis on today's topic. There's a link in the show notes. Tune in next week for more expert insights and meaningful discussions from CISO perspectives. This episode was edited by Ethan Cook, with content strategy provided by Myon Plot, produced by Liz Stokes, executive produced by Jennifer Ivan, and mixing sound design and original music by Elliot Pelsman. I'm Kim Jones, and thank you for listening.

Securing and managing enterprise networks shouldn't mean juggling vendors, patching hardware, or managing endless complexity. Meter builds full-stack zero-trust networks from the ground up, secure by design, and automatically kept up to date. Every layer, from wired and wireless to firewalls, DNS security, and VPN is integrated, segmented, and continuously protected through one unified platform. With meter security is built in, not bolted on. Learn more and book your demo at meter.com slash CISOP. That's METER.com slash CISOP. And we thank Meeter for their support in unlocking this N2K Pro episode for all Cyberwire listeners.