Video Transcript – Cyber Operations and Resilience – Advance your career with a master’s degree

Boise State Online’s Cyber Operations and Resilience programs equip future cyber professionals and leaders with applicable learning and skills to create holistic resiliency across people, processes and technology. The master’s level program provides the skills and knowledge for a career advancement or change in cybersecurity and related fields. It can put you at the leadership table. That was on of the reasons why Cody Shepherd chose it as his graduate degree.

Video Transcript

My name is Cody Shepherd, and I am doing my Master’s of Science in Cyber Operations and Resilience.

I’ve come pretty far in a good career. I can speak the quote unquote IT language, and I’m pretty good about speaking the business language of IT. So now there’s this cybersecurity language that is associated heavily, usually with IT. If I know both of them, I think that that not only increases my marketability and increases my value proposition. It’s also just going to make things more interesting in whatever kind of job or career I want to do, including my current one. It’s already taken my current position to a whole new level.

Cybersecurity, what I’m really discovering, there’s a technical component to it because you always think of like hackers and hands on keyboard and who’s going to be breaking into systems, but there is so much more to it than that. So if you want to write code and do those types of activities, there’s jobs for you, but if you like structure and you want to build frameworks and you want to build programs, there’s jobs for you. You start to learn all those concepts and start to bolt them all together. And then you understand the bigger picture about, why do we do this? And why is cybersecurity such a hot topic? And why is cybersecurity such an important investment? That’s many times misunderstood on why you need to invest in it.

Endorsed by Major Cyber Industry Leaders

This Cyber Operations and Resilience program is 100% asynchronous online. It is nationally recognized and has a great reputation, but it’s still a great education at a great cost. I feel like if I spent $25,000 on education at Boise State University, for that same education, I could easily spend $100,000 somewhere else.

It still has that Idaho personality, no matter who’s attending. You know, since it’s an online program, they can be from all over the country. I’ve met fantastic people from Florida to California to Arizona who are in the program and stuff. It still has that Idaho feel to it. You know, it’s a natural friendliness and a natural appreciation for when people are sharing. Because you’re doing discussion boards, it still has that support of being Idaho. Nobody’s out to get anybody else or to make them feel inadequate.

I want to make my professors proud. This is honestly a thing that motivates me that I’ve recognized early in my life is, if I identify somebody who I think believes in me, then I’m not going to let them down. And I had that immediate connection with Dr. Loo. So I had to make sure that I did very, very well in the program and represented the program well, while still maintaining my job, still maintaining my personal life.

High Demand for Cyber Professionals

But there’s a prize at the end and there’s a benefit at the end that’s even greater than that. Nobody’s ever done anything amazing by being comfortable. This is what school is about, is to help you learn and to help you gain that kind of knowledge and information that you’re wanting to learn, but you’re scared to. There’s people to help you to do that. And that’s specifically what school is.

The cool part is once this is all over, I won’t know what the future holds, but I don’t have to be scared of it.