Cyber Defenders

The mission of the Cyber Defenders internship program is to expand and diversify the cybersecurity workforce by working directly with Silicon Valley community college computer science students. With 1.8 million open cybersecurity jobs looming, tech firms are scrambling to fill employment gaps. Many computer science students, even those in the heart of Silicon Valley, lack an understanding of the opportunities in cybersecurity or an avenue to gain the skills that qualify them for entry-level employment.

Few college-level degrees, even at the 4-year level, provide the specific skills for entry-level cybersecurity jobs while professional programs such as General Assembly omit cybersecurity training from their course offerings. The Cyber Defenders program finds untapped potential by targeting local community college students hungry for industry opportunities, provides them with job-ready cybersecurity skills and helps them chart their pathway to degrees and careers in the field.

The 8-week internship, hosted at San Jose City College, includes foundational training in the following: Python Programming, Network Security, OWASP Top 10, Penetration Testing (Kali Linux, Metasploit), Incident Research, Machine Learning and AI. In addition, participants from groups work on a summer-long cybersecurity research project informed and mentored by industry experts. The program concludes with Demo Day - a Shark Tank-style group presentation of their research projects in front of an industry audience.

Cyberdefenders 2019

Alumni from the last two Cyber Defenders cohorts have gone on to cybersecurity employment as well as transferred to computer science programs at 4-year universities including UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Summer 2018 cohort by the numbers

20 students coming from five local community colleges

  • 25% women
  • 80% non-white, 40% Latino/a
  • 95% program completion rate
  • 9 industry guest lectures from experts at Tanium, Symantec, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and others
  • 19 companies represented as industry partners of the program (mentoring projects, judging at Demo Day, etc)
  • 72% of participants joined a cybersecurity networking group outside of the program

Cyberdefenders 2019