SAN ANTONIO — The North East Independent School District’s Institute of Cyber Security and Innovation is officially open.
“My first thought was, 'This is so cool, it’s like a little FBI center,'” NEISD Freshman Layla Tijerina said.
Tijerina is just one of 170 NEISD freshman to learn in this brand new $5 million dollar facility. Students will get hands on Cyber Security and Networking experience.
“You can talk about concepts, and you can cover concepts and prepare a student to take a test, but here at ICSI, we have students go in and actually create networking topology,” Cyber Security instructor Josh Beck said.
Beck has been a cyber security instructor for years, but this will be his first time teaching in a classroom as advanced as these, using real time threat data.
“These lines and activity you see behind me may or may not be legitimate threats moving from one point in the world to another. In the third year class, we train students to work with software like this to identify threats and make those decisions,” Beck said.
Beck says with technology evolving as quickly as it is, there’s a demand for cyber security jobs, but not enough people to fill it.
“We see these stories about data breaches. These types of things really affect everyone, so we need as many skilled people in the workforce as possible,” Beck said.
“My main goal is to help people and help keep the world safe,” Tijerina said.
Only about one third of the building is finished, but the district says big plans are in place for this growing technology program.
“After four years we’ll need more classroom space, and we’re also looking forward to a new state of the art competition arena,” Beck said.
“This is so important, especially with all of the COVID happening -- all we have is technology. Cyber security is important to keep everything secure,” Tijerina said.
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