May 11, 2021

Members of the new Mizzou Cybersecurity Industry Advisory Board are: Top, from left: Ryan Frillman, Equifax; Cindi Carter, MedeAnalytics; Kevin Fuller, Burns & McDonnell; Jason Martin, Defense Information and Systems Agency. Bottom, from left: Randy Raw, Veterans United Home Loans; Walid Rjaibi, IBM; Nichole Windholz, health care company in Kansas City; and Jon Rolf of the National Security Agency who will serve as a liaison.

A new Mizzou Cybersecurity Center Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) is helping the college enhance curriculum and research to best meet emerging needs within cybersecurity fields.

Members of the IAB met earlier this month with center co-directors Rohit Chadha and Prasad Calyam; Kamrul Islam, chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department; and Giovanna Guidoboni, associate dean of research; as well as faculty working in the area of cybersecurity.

The board applauded Mizzou’s focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and provided new insights into ways the college can further advance cybersecurity training.

“IAB members provided university administrators strategic advice on crucial areas in cybersecurity for growing research, infrastructure, hiring faculty and creating state-of-the-art course curriculum,” said Calyam, who is also director of the Mizzou CERI Center for Cyber Education, Research and Infrastructure. “They also provided guidance on ways the university can pursue efforts on transition to practice in the area of cybersecurity.”

The IAB reiterated that cybersecurity goes beyond the tech industry. It’s critical for national defense, healthcare and private industry. Mizzou is one of few universities in the country with engineering, medicine, veterinary medicine, nursing, agriculture, animal science and a nuclear reactor on campus.

“Mizzou is uniquely positioned to become a leader in cybersecurity education because of the various colleges we have that can work together to solve the big challenges around data security,” Guidoboni said. “These cybersecurity experts will help us determine how best to work with cross-campus partners to ensure we’re connecting cyber education with real-world applications across various industries.”

The board also heard from students who discussed their research around cybersecurity.

IAB members for the Mizzou Cybersecurity Center are:

• Ryan Frillman, Technology Information Security Officer at Equifax Workforce Solutions in St. Louis
• Cindi Carter, Chief Information Security Officer at IntSights in Kansas City
• Randy Raw, Vice President of Information Security at Veterans United Home Loans
• Nichole Windholz, a lead technology architect for a large health care company in Kansas City
• Kevin Fuller, Senior Director and CISO at Cognizant
• Jason Martin, Vice Director of Development and Business Center at the Defense Information and Systems Agency
• Walid Rjaibi, a Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Data Security at IBM
• Jon Rolf, Technology Lead for the National Security Agency (Liasion)