Programs and Initiatives supported by the MHC
The Student Data Center (SDC)
The SDC is a room that houses a data center which includes computing, networking and storage systems that are typical for use in cloud data centers. The facility was designed with student and curricular needs in mind while also representing industry best practices. This infrastructure is being used regularly to prepare students for cybersecurity competitions, and to create experiential learning in courses of multiple programs.The Student Security Operations Center (SOC)
The mission of the SOC is to monitor the SDC and improve its security posture by continuously monitoring logs using System Information and Event Monitoring technologies like Splunk, IBM QRadar and Microsoft Sentinel. The goal is also to provide students interested in Cybersecurity with the relevant skills that they will need to give them a head start on their Cybersecurity careers. The SOC collaborates closely with the SDC, which provides a platform for students to work on various projects. One such project is the Splunk Lab, created and managed by SOC students.
Students with an Interest in the Future of Technology (SWIFT)
SWIFT is one of the most active clubs at CPP that provides a supportive and collaborative environment for students to learn about the latest technologies and techniques in cybersecurity. SWIFT members use the SDC and SOC infrastructure to prepare students for cybersecurity competitions. During the 2023-2024 period, the club currently has about 100 members. They meet two times a week. One meeting is to review concepts and the second meeting includes hands-on activities. Each of these meetings has an average attendance of 40 students. The club organizes a bootcamp every summer where about 60 students receive cybersecurity training. The bootcamp is delivered over an 8-week period with around 200 virtual machines utilized every week. Additionally, SWIFT regularly uses the SDC's resources for weekly workshops held throughout the school semester, averaging around 40 virtual machines a week and 100 virtual machines for their hosted events.
Cybersecurity Competitions Supported by the SDC and SOC
Cal Poly Pomona students participate in numerous cybersecurity competitions and have obtained several achievements including first and second place finishes at regional and national competitions.
Cybersecurity Competition Team Accomplishments Supported by the SOC/SDC
2022-2023 - First Place Champions
2021-2022 – First Place Champions
National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
2024 - 2nd Place in National Championship
2023 - 2nd Place in National Championship
Federal partners include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)/National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education (NICE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense Office of the Chief Information Officer (DoD-CIO), and U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM).
Co-Curricular Accomplishments Driven by the SOC/SDC
Gabriel Fok and Evan Deters automated the process to deploy RvB (Red versus Blue) infrastructure with an app called KAMINO that runs from the SDC. This app is used by many students on campus,
CPP faculty, the cyberpatriot high school national teams, and other universities like Dakota State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and University of Texas, Austin. They all use this application regularly to prepare students for cybersecurity competitions by providing the infrastructure to simulate attacks and defense procedures.
Red vs. Blue (RvB) is a SWIFT-run competition that enables its teams competing in regional and national events like the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) and Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) to share the technical knowledge they’ve gained with other students. Modeled after CCDC, RvB places a team of 4 students into a fictitious company’s vulnerable network that they have to protect. SWIFT board and alumni act as an adversary or red team trying to compromise the network and give students a unique experience of troubleshooting and incident response in an active breach scenario.
The SOC students created the Splunk Lab. This is a virtual lab that was designed to give students practical Splunk skills. In this lab students set up their own Splunk Server in their own virtual labs hosted on the Student Data Center. They learn how to retrieve data from different endpoint devices, monitor the log data from these devices and create detection rules to better secure these devices. They also get to learn how to easily scale the deployment of Splunk and build resilient Splunk infrastructure. The SOC students have access to free Splunk training to get certified in Splunk. Students have used this training to get Splunk certified. The SOC students were also invited to Splunk’s biggest conference called .conf24 in June 2024, where they were able to network with Splunk professionals and learn about how Splunk is being used in industry.
Starting Fall 2024, weekly meetings were scheduled with Dr. Indira Guzman, Dr. Ron Pike, Dr. Dan Manson, Curtis Carpenter, Dr. Weijun Zheng, and the SWIFT presidents, Bill Luong and Sydney Duong to discuss the current and future cybersecurity competitions. One of the plans is to implement badges on CANVAS for the completion of specific extra-curriculum milestones.
Who Hires our Students?
These are some career updates about the students who were affiliated with the MHC.
1. Jacob Jayme was co-director the SDC until December 2023. He currently works for Cisco as a Security Engineer. He also just got accepted to Georgia Tech’s Masters in Cybersecurity program which Cisco is paying for!
2. Dylan Wong was co-director of the SDC until Spring 2023. Worked for IBM / Red Hat as a student while working in the SOC. He is current working as an Associate Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat.
3. Justin Covairt was director of the SOC and graduated Spring 2023. He is a full time Red Team Cyber Engineer at Crowdstrike.
4. Taylor Nguyen – was volunteer for the SOC 2021-2023 and graduated Spring 2023. He is a full time Red Team Cyber Engineer at Crowdstrike.
5. Jensen Gomez – was the SOC Lead from 2019-2020. He currently works as the Sr. SOC Analyst at NBCUniversal.
6. Karanbir Singh – was the project lead of the SDC and SOC 2018-2021. He works in cybersecurity as an Incident Response at CrowdStrike.
7. Carlos – Security Engineer at CrowdStrike.
8. Matt Spriengel – First SOC student. Formerly worked at Department of Homeland Security and PWC. Former CPP adjunct faculty who now works as the information security management for Disney.
9. Silas Shen – Red team engineer at Crowdstrike. Graduated in 2020
10. Gabriel Fok was a 2021-2022 SWIFT vice president of operations and was actively engaged with the SDC. He currently works as a Systems Engineer at Boeing.
11. Evan Deters was a 2021-2022 SWIFT director of infrastructure. He was in charge of the revival of the SDC after Covid. He currently works as a Systems Engineer at Boeing.