The faces on the video call represented different races, genders and generations.
Many of the three dozen participants on the call January 26 looked to be in their 20s, with others likely encroaching middle age.
Regardless of age and background, all were there for an introductory three-and-a-half-hour virtual class on cybersecurity, the first installment in a 40-hour course on the subject that’s part of a new noncredit cybersecurity “boot camp” offered through UNLV’s Continuing Education department.
The introductory portion costs $500. The full 400-hour training program, which lasts 10 months and requires passage of the initial course, runs about $15,000.
Al Alvaran, 42, who earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from UNLV about two decades ago, has worked for Genesis Gaming for the past decade. Genesis is a Texas-based company with an office in Las Vegas.
Alvaran helps design tables for casino gambling games and has a baseline digital skill set—including a background in graphic design and programming—for the cybersecurity program.
He’s not dissatisfied with his job, but he said he’s intrigued by the potential doors the cybersecurity training could open. If nothing else, he said, he will gain some knowledge. He was one of the participants who paid $500 for the introductory course.
“This is the way things are going, whether it’s something like this or coding,” Alvaran said. “Cybersecurity is really important today. You see news about all these hacking incidents. What I’ve heard is that there are a lot of openings in that line of work.”
From UNLV’s end, the program is meant to help decrease what the university calls a “growing digital skills gap” in Southern Nevada. It also comes at a time when the state’s unemployment rate is hovering around 9%, still high but much lower than when the figure spiked to an all-time peak of 30.1% in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.
There’s long been a push by some community leaders in Southern Nevada to further diversify the region’s tourism-centric economy. Those voices have been louder during the pandemic.
“As our community recognizes the need to diversify our economy, we also recognize there’s a digital skills gap in our talent pool, which makes it difficult to attract new businesses,” said Heidi Erpelding-Welch, director of program development at UNLV. “UNLV Continuing Education is working to contribute to solutions that will prepare our workforce for new rewarding careers that are going to continue to grow in demand. In turn, we hope it will continue to fill those skills gaps.
A person with cybersecurity training could work in-house at a company to help monitor information systems for hacks and security vulnerabilities, or as a contracted specialist to monitor anything from the systems that govern an airplane to the websites of some of the most recognizable brands in the world.
During the session, at least a couple of eyebrows seemed to raise when the instructor asked students how much money they thought a company like Amazon would lose if its website were to be blacked out by hackers for only five minutes.
“You see breaches in the news all the time,” Alvaran said. “It could be from foreign hackers or anywhere. There was a story about Southwest Gas being hacked recently. Just think if our power grid were to be hacked? What would we do?”
To prevent those types of issues—on a large or small scale—the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is calling for a lot more cybersecurity-trained professionals in the coming years.
The growth rate for information security analyst positions during the next decade is expected to be nearly eight times that of the average growth rate for all other occupations, according to the bureau.
Cybersecurity training could also lead to other positions in the tech realm, which continues to grow at a rapid rate. In its recently released list of the top 50 jobs in America for 2021, Glassdoor, a company review website, listed 22 tech-related careers.
To develop the bootcamp program, UNLV partnered with HackerU, an Israel-based digital training firm that has also worked with schools like the University of Miami, University of Wisconsin, San Diego State University, as well as companies like Microsoft and Coca-Cola.
Ayal Stern, a HackerU executive, said in a news release that the program promises to “play a pivitol role in developing skilled cybersecurity professionals that will go on to protect Nevada’s most critical assets for years to come.”
In fact, Cyber Seek, a cybersecurity information website supported by the U.S. Department of Commerce, shows that Nevada has more than 2,700 openings for cybersecurity-related jobs today.
Alvaran said he plans to take the full 400-hour course. The next introductory cohort for the program is scheduled to begin in March, according to Erpelding-Welch.
“You don’t want to be stagnant these days,” Alvaran said. “Education is important, though I wish it wasn’t so expensive. In today’s world, you have to keep up and keep your brain going.”