The University System of Georgia Board of Regents recently approved two new bachelor’s degrees to be offered at Columbus State University’s Turner College of Business, pending approval by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. The new degrees are a bachelor of business administration in cybersecurity management and a bachelor of science in cybersecurity. Both will help train students for the booming cybersecurity industry.

The proposed B.S. in cybersecurity consists of 120 credit-hours, and the B.B.A. degree is 123 credit hours. Students will learn how to protect critical information infrastructures by developing, implementing, and maintaining appropriate cybersecurity policies and practices to help prevent, detect, and eliminate security threats. Graduates will have the opportunity to join the local, state, national, and international cybersecurity workforce as well-qualified professionals.

“The field of cybersecurity touches every aspect of our lives. These degree programs will prepare students to take on leading roles in financial technology, banking, insurance, health care and other industries that deal with data. Graduates from this program will have a significant impact on how we conduct business on a daily basis,” said Dr. Deborah Bordelon, Provost and Executive Vice President.

Dr. Linda Hadley, Dean of the Turner College of Business added that “the demand for effective measures to combat the diverse threats we face from fraud has rapidly increased, and so has the demand for skilled professionals to implement them.  These new degree programs were created in direct response to regional employers’ unmet demand for cybersecurity professionals to protect their information and infrastructure.”
Columbus State University is a leader in Cybersecurity education, with a program that was developed within the TSYS School of Computing to meet the needs of the fastest growing area of job growth in America.  

CyberSeek, a program of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, projects that there are more than 314,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. with 11,377 of those located in the State of Georgia. During a recent visit to CSU, Georgia State Senator John Albers, an Alumnus of Harvard’s Cybersecurity Program, puts the number of unfilled cybersecurity positions in the state much higher at approximately 24,000.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cybersecurity employment growth is projected at 28% annually through 2026 – a growth rate that is much faster than average for all other occupations. U.S. News and World Report ranked a career in information security analyst fourth on its list of the ten best technology jobs and 40th out of the 100 best jobs in general for 2019.