Erik Moore Appointed New Online MS in Cybersecurity Leadership Program Director
Moore taught at Regis University for over two decades, founding their NSA-designated Center for Academic Excellence, while also consulting on cybersecurity services for the private and public sector.
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Erik Moore joined Albers in May as Program Director for its new online offering, the MS in Cybersecurity Leadership, which launches this fall. Moore’s experience straddles the two worlds of industry and academia. He has taught at Regis University for over two decades, founding their National Security Agency (NSA)-designated Center of Academic Excellence, while also developing and directing cybersecurity, field services, and large-scale infra-structure in leading technologies for the private and public sector.
As the new Program Director for the new Master’s in Cybersecurity Leadership, what are your thoughts on who should take the program and why?
The program is designed for students with multiple backgrounds striving to advance in cybersecurity leadership. This can be professionals with strong technical cybersecurity capabilities looking to advance to leadership. It can equally benefit students with management and corporate leadership experience to take on cybersecurity leadership. Of course, others on a diverse range of paths are also welcome.
This eclecticism is part of the philosophy of the program, and it addresses real world challenges at companies, government agencies, and other types of entities where emerging complex cybersecurity challenges affect whole organizations. We need prepared leaders in this nexus, so we’re developing this program to foster a cybersecurity leadership mindset through active engagement in these challenges.
Challenges can include how to characterize risk, how to foster strong organizational culture, how to evaluate threat, and how to achieve cyber resilience in a way that ensures that the organizations we serve and lead thrive and grow long into the future.
You’re both an academic and a practitioner/ subject matter expert in your field. How do the two inform each other, if at all?
It’s true I’ve found myself engaging continuously in both active cyber defense operations and in the more academic pursuits of publishing research and teaching. Students notice first that I bring a lot of stories from the front lines of cybersecurity, and I hope this makes the classes more fun and valuable.
It also means that as the threat landscape changes, I usually have first-hand information I can bring to the classroom immediately. Emergent threats, vulnerabilities, and technologies can have an immediate impact on what is important in the classroom.
That means the program we offer needs to have topically-open assignments that can incorporate the very latest events and trends in their studies, yielding a stronger portfolio as they represent themselves in the workforce.
Why an MS in Cybersecurity Leadership?
Erik Moore
[This program] addresses real world challenges at companies, government agencies, and other types of entities where emerging complex cybersecurity challenges affect whole organizations. We need prepared leaders in this nexus.
Program Director, MS in Cybersecurity Leadership
'Cyber defense has become as important as defending national borders in a physical way'
Russian and Chinese hackers are in the news on a regular basis, as is Tiktok. Do you think these are the biggest challenges in cybersecurity today? Or is there something more nefarious afoot?
We can see clearly with legislation like the “Chips Act” here in the US that what we thought of as the open global internet, an apparent panacea for solving problems, has led to greater risk in protecting critical infrastructure of nations, companies, and individual accounts. To ensure the long-term viability of these critical assets, nations need to create cyber domains of control and offer substantive assurances of protection. It also means that we need to protect our citizenry and political processes from foreign disruption, deception, and covert influence campaigns.
Nations with the capacity to actively defend critical supply chains, telecommunications assets, digital commerce, and social media are shoring up stronger domains of control. This cyber defense requirement has become as important as defending national borders in a physical way, even though the assets may be spread across the world, on your phone, and in orbit.
As this edition of the Albers Brief is about mentorship, who was your mentor and what lesson has stuck by you to this day?
I got to know Dickie George while attending a series of conferences called “The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education” that he helped found. Dickie was head of Cryptanalytics at the US National Security Agency.
Around the dinner table, or in a room of thousands, he told stories that exemplified the paradigm shifts that occurred in cybersecurity, often when he had a front row seat. The big takeaway I’ve gotten from his stories over the years is that we must all recognize those moments of sea change, and begin charting new courses for our careers, our organizations, and for society. He helped me to see the bigger picture, that it is all of us on this little globe that are becoming more and more cyber-dependent.
If we are going to solve the challenges of the natural and social world that humanity faces, we need to keep cyberspace thriving, so that scientists, engineers, physicians, diplomats, and business leaders can be fully empowered with the latest digital technologies to increase our understanding of the world, build resilient solutions, and create a robust and vibrant society. Now I’m the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of The Colloquium, and I am still driven by that dream.