I work for a cybersecurity company and I am making 450K/yr as a SME in Information Security. It is a very good field to be in.

My DS recently graduated from VATech with a degree in CS, and he is really good with finding system vulnerabilities. He is working for a company that has many contracts with the federal government his job is a "white hat". He is getting paid 250K salary upon graduation.

Excellent post!

Both UMBC and GMU are solid local options for a BS Computer Engineering student or BS Computer Science student interested in this area, but the student should first focus on deep knowledge of computer internals and networking as foundational skills, then take some security courses to supplement.

Also, students should make sure have a solid knowledge of UNIX (including Linux or now even including MacOS) and be experienced with its shell interface, editors (vi, emacs), and its command-line tools.

Anonymous wrote:
Many, but not all, students who get a BA or BS which is specifically in Cyber Security will have stable employment and reasonable starting salaries, but their lack of the deep foundational knowledge of how computer internals and networks work usually eventually caps out their career with a kind of glass ceiling.

A poorly understood potential pit fall is that many Cyber Security engineering jobs end up being more like highly skilled technician work. People who do as I outline above will always have lots of interesting work and no glass ceiling to contend with.

+1

Anonymous wrote:My DS is very much interested in Cyber Security. Is this a good choice for his career?

Like a lot of things this can mean a variety of things. Firstly, this is the kind of field where a BS is mostly all that is needed. If you go someplace like UMD that has a strong program you should not have a hard time finding GOOD and possibly interesting work. Certifications may be necessary to advance but I wouldn't worry about that starting out.