Leading the initiative to address cybersecurity challenges.
The Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute (CCI) leads a state and national initiative to address cybersecurity challenges. By bringing together the tech community, government agencies, and educational institutions, the CCI is enhancing cybersecurity defense capabilities at Cal Poly, for the state of California, and across the nation.
We do this through our work focused on three pillars:
Train to reskill, upskill, and build tech literacy across the State of California and communities around the country.
Accelerate unique opportunities to advance the Cal Poly Learn by Doing pedagogy for students and faculty.
Empower early education opportunities to build a pipeline for future students interested in careers in technology.
- Expanding the Space Grand Challenge (SGC) Program. The Space Grand Challenge (SGC) Program is a global virtual game-based cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students built by Cal Poly students. Last year, 332 players from around the world participated in CCI’s flagship initiative. An exemplar of Learn by Doing, 50+ students work on this platform annually. CCI seeks to expand SGC by recruiting more student assistants to work at the CCI, and the adoption of new tools and trainings.
- Meeting the Growing Demand around Cyber Civics. The more we adopt technology, the more we need to make sure we are protected against cyber threats. Originally started in 2018, the Digital Literacy training is being relaunched as Cyber Civics—a modular training platform made available for free to all California educators training tomorrow’s workforce.
- Building a Day One Ready Workforce. The CCI prioritizes training students for the workforce, ready to hit the ground running on day one of their careers. CCI does this by employing Student-Assistants and providing a variety of industry trainings, as well as opportunities to participate in events and conferences around the country.
