Aspiring Cybersecurity Experts Are Thriving at Syracuse- But What Does the Signal Incident Mean for the Future of their Community? Last week’s national security Signal incident raised serious questions within the cybersecurity industry. The Information Security Club at Syracuse is making sure the next generation of cybersecurity leaders don’t have to answer them.
By: Dan Jaime
SYRACUSE, NY - In a world where personal privacy is at the pinnacle of people’s priorities, it has - paradoxically - never been easier to fall victim to the theft of your personal information. The next generation of Cybersecurity experts, right here at Syracuse, are ensuring that changes.
The Information Security Club, an undergraduate-run organization at the iSchool at Syracuse University, works together weekly to prepare and equip the next wave of cybersecurity professionals with “applicable skills to the workforce, and education in areas where [Syracuse] University lacks departments,” said Gianna Voce, Vice-President of the Information Security Club. Voce, a sophomore studying Computer Science and Neuroscience, joined the Executive Board of the club at the start of this current school year, and is tasked with “planning, organizing, and executing [their] weekly meetings, workshops, and competitions, all while making sure that [members] are having fun with it.”
Cybersecurity can be somewhat of a ‘niche’ interest here at Syracuse, as the university does not offer a major or minor in Cybersecurity - Voce was quick to point that out - but there is an Information Security graduate program. As a result, the Information Security Club “[does] get a lot of grad students, which is great because they can kind of mentor the younger students,” which results in a cyclical, mutually beneficial relationship between the club and the school’s Information Security graduate program. Voce recalled a moment from earlier in the year when one of the club’s graduate students helped a freshman during an encryption workshop, sitting down with him and talking it through. “That’s just the kind of culture we’ve tried to cultivate here, we’re all pretty much in the same boat.”
The Information Security Club isn’t just another club for members to be able to add to their resume, though. They consider themselves a group who not only aim to thrive in one of today’s most relevant industries, but, in the words of their organizational mission, “practices managing the inherent challenges in protecting and defending corporate network infrastructures,” and gives students a healthy atmosphere in which to do that.
Townsend Pantano, Treasurer for the Information Security Club, has done more than his fair share towards providing a both educational, yet fun, experience for club meetings. “Two weeks ago I ran a workshop on steganography, where I walked the club through how to discover secret, encrypted data inside pictures,” said an inspired Pantano, as the passion in his voice only grew. “I had some fun with it. I used memes and other inside jokes with the club. At the end of the day, we’re just trying to teach [them] something interesting, something fun, and most importantly, skills they can use in the future.”
But while cybersecurity may be fun to teach in 011 Hinds Hall, no one in the Information Security Club was laughing last week when The Atlantic published screenshots of an apparent Signal group chat that editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to by national security officials, hours before US strikes on Yemen. The text exchanges included deliberations about the strikes and specific operational details about US troop missions, and participants in the chat included Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
It was a catastrophic cybersecurity failure on the global stage with the rest of the world watching and laughing; you could hear a pin drop at the beginning of the Information Security Club’s weekly meeting.
Pantano seemed like something was especially bothering him. “Even as part of my entry level job, I had to do training on controlled unclassified information and controlled classified information. That’s what’s so concerning about this specific story, the mistake was incredibly avoidable from a technological standpoint!” But is there any chance that this could have been a mistake by Signal’s software? Pantano and Voce don’t seem to think so. “Signal is one of the better apps to have government officials talking on,” they agreed in unison. “They have open-source encryption, which is really important because that means we can individually confirm that the software is indeed encrypting the texts.” Other popular communication softwares, like Whatsapp or Telegram, have encryption codes that are not open-source, and thus the privacy of the texts isn’t guaranteed, which is why Signal is preferred for government officials.
“I really think a story like this brings up the need for cybersecurity education at all levels of academia,” said a concerned Voce, “and that’s exactly where an organization like the Information Security Club steps up.” By allowing undergraduate students interested in cybersecurity to learn from workshops and competitions like the ones run by the ISC, they are instilling a deep knowledge and passion for one of the most relevant and important industries of today, while simultaneously training the cyber experts of tomorrow to avoid any additional cataclysmic breakdowns in national security and technology.