THE PROJECT
New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) is working together with industry partners and the Department of Education to improve cybersecurity educational resources and address the gap in cybersecurity skills in the Canadian workforce. To ensure students have the capability to practice detection and remediations of cyber attacks, they created the CI-SOC (Critical Infrastructure Security Operations Center). The CI-SOC simulates cyber incidents in a real-world environment for teaching, learning, training and applied research, ensuring students are prepared to handle any challenge. The CI-SOC is the first training lab of its kind in New Brunswick.
COMMUNITY IMPACT
NBCC partnered with CyberNB, a New Brunswick-based convenor of national cybersecurity stakeholders and provincial education departments, bringing to life a large-scale, fully simulated threat monitoring environment that gives students a new way to learn about detecting and remedying cyberattacks. The lab recreates the real-world cybersecurity attacks and network traffic that critical infrastructure operators face day-to-day. The CI-SOC also spurred new cross-disciplinary discussions between programs covering Operational and Information Technologies, creating bridges between NBCC’s Schools of Engineering and IT. Similarly, the lab has created opportunities for customized simulation and training for educators and students in the K-12 system. CIRA’s support also led to additional funding from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation to ensure the CI-SOC is maintained in the future.
RELATED LINKS
- Read CIRA’s blog, How New Brunswick Community College is teaching real-world cybersecurity protection through simulation
- Learn more about the CI-SOC on their website
- Take a video tour of the lab on X (formerly Twitter)
PHOTOS
Courtesy of New Brunswick Community College
