Author: Barry Hudson

September 19th was USC Aiken science education and STEM day. This is a Fall tradition for 41 years at the University and has grown from 10 tables at the Ruth Patrick science Center to over 70 exhibits all over campus.

With the help of an Aiken high School volunteer, Logan, and 2 of my bootcamp students Jerrod and Brecken, I staffed the exhibit for CyberSC.us cybersecurity career and awareness programs.

Our booth used a really neat device called Makey Makey and a program called Apple Piano that allows you to connect apples as triggers for your keyboard demonstrating the difference between a conductor and an insulator, and how to complete a circuit.

We also gave out 150 CpherFidgets, the secret decoder ring designed and manufactured by my son at cipherfidget.com. New this year were my Enigma replicas. Imagine my surprise when an 8-year-old recognized them and demonstrated them to his parents.

We made over 80 presentations to almost 300 people during the 5-Hour event. While this is geared towards elementary and Middle School students, the parents seemed just as excited to learn about how your body and other items are conductors while wood and plastic are not.

The parents were also thrilled to see vintage computer parts and explain to their children how they used to have to save data on floppy disks and the computer screens only had words, but no pictures.

It was particularly rewarding to do the demo for one group of children and then another group would come up and they would demonstrate to the new kids what they had just learned.

On August 26, 2026 I was honored by the South Carolina Cyber Association, CyberSC.us, for my more than two decades of volunteer work in high school robotics, STEM education, cyber workforce development and mentoring in cybersecurity. 

One item that was specifically called out was the 100% success rate on the certification exams from our recent Summer Cyber bootcamp. 

The conference was held in Greenville South Carolina. There were a few old friends there and many new ones to be made.

Tom Scott, the chairman of CyberSC made the presentation.

I gave a brief thank you talk that encouraged everyone in the room to find someone who looks up to them or walks beside them in STEM and to share and learn from each other. IMHO, a leader is not the person at the front of the pack, but one of the people who walks side by side with each other sharing and learning.

We had 54 applications for this course and only 10 seats funded. See how we adapted and served 20 students in 3 Certification classes within our budget. And achieved 100% pass rate for the 12 students who sat for exams.

The USCA Summer Cyber Bootcamp was a real delight this year. It was free for the students. We changed the format to a compressed schedule and focused on serving local students and earning certifications. Within30 days of concluding the class, I have had 12 of 12 students pass a certification exam.

We led a cadre of students down the path to 3 cyber certifications: ISC2-CC, CompTIA Sec+, and EC-Council Digital Forensics Essentials (DFE). All 18 selected students had free ISC2 CC course and exam voucher, and Sec+ online notes and exam vouchers. Ten of them also took the Forensics class.

My classes are known for my spontaneous outbursts between Dad jokes and war stories with a heavy dose of cyber fundamentals mixed in. You gotta work hard to keep them awake for 2 weeks of 7 hour bootcamp lessons.

I hope they remember this summer as proof that “you don’t pick cybersecurity …. cybersecurity picks you”.

From 54 applicants, I had students from 5 universities, 3 high schoolers, and two non-traditional students. Some students have 2-3 years of experience in SOC or field work, some are members of Cyber Competition Teams, and others are just curious about the profession.

In addition to the vendor-supplied courses, we had a conversation-based experience where we debated scenarios, learned from each-others’ ideas and perspectives, hosted 12 guest speakers, a CTF, and (unfortunately) covered over 400 PowerPoint slides. The courses include practice tests, an ebook, and exam vouchers.

We also did my annual small business audit. Getting real world experience in 2 hours can be better than 6 hours of PowerPoint punishment. Five student teams picked five to six questions to extract information from five people we interviewed on matters ranging from CSF 2.0 GIPDRR families. We covered GRC, detection, protection, response and recovery, and user awareness training.

Here are some quotes from the students

• This has been the opportunity of a lifetime.
• It made me realize I knew more than I thought I did about cybersecurity.
• The instructors are national treasures.
• The audit was the best thing that has ever happened to me for cybersecurity.
• I learned more here in two weeks than I have in the two years I have enrolled in regular classes at the university.
• I have met and made so many friends. I have found my people.
• I hope you do this again next year and offer more advanced classes.
• The certification will help me move my resume to the top of the stack.

Another summer is coming and I get to put on my teaching hat again. USCA will be hosting students in a summer class-room based cyber program again. But due to funding cuts, we will not hold the usual four-course residential program. We will be hosting two 2-week classroom-based bootcamps from June 8 to July 2.

For the first session, we have enrolled 18 local and nearby students in a free 2-week bootcamp with the goal of teaching the material and paying for the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity and CompTIA Security+ exams. Acceptance was based on a brief essay expressing their goals, rather than hard prerequisites. As a result, I have 13 students from 5 universities, 3 high schoolers, and two non-traditional students. Some students have 2-3 years of experience in SOC or field work, some are members of Cyber Competition Teams, and others are just curious about the profession.

I envision a conversation-based experience where we debate scenarios, learn from each-others’ ideas and perspectives, host guest speakers, a CTF, and (unfortunately) cover over 400 PowerPoint slides. The course includes practice tests and an ebook. I also have a “fishbowl” of 120 questions that I will pose to get the conversations and tabletop exercises started. And of course, my war stories from 20+ years in IT and Cyber. (Like what do you do with an iPhone you find in a bathroom stall).

The second 2-week class is the EC-Council Digital Forensics Essentials (DFE) class with certification exam. Taught by my friend Ernest Momoh MBA, CISSP, CISM . Ten of the students from Session 1 will attend.

Looking forward to a great month of June.

Cyber Encryption: A Hands-On Experience

Recommended for everyone, especially students and educators. This is a fun workshop demonstrating the basic concepts of simple encryption (using a secret decoder ring). This introduction will show how these concepts are used to create the complex encryption methods that (when properly implemented) can assure online privacy, confidentiality, data integrity, and non-repudiation. 

September 20th was USC Aiken science education and STEM day. This is a Fall tradition for 40 years at the University and has grown from 10 tables at the Ruth Patrick science Center to over 70 exhibits all over campus.

With the help of an Aiken high School volunteer, Logan, I staffed the exhibit for CYBESEC while Thomas Scott ran a booth for the University science and engineering and cybersecurity awareness programs.

Our booth used a really neat device called Makey Makey and a program called Apple Piano that allows you to connect apples as triggers for your keyboard demonstrating the difference between a conductor and an insulator, and how to complete a circuit.

We made over 100 presentations to almost 400 people during the 5-Hour event. While this is geared towards elementary and Middle School students, the parents seemed just as excited to learn about how your body and other items are conductors while wood and plastic are not.

It was particularly rewarding to do the demo for one group of children and then another group would come up and they would demonstrate to the new kids what they had just learned.

The parents were also thrilled to see vintage computer parts and explain to their children how they used to have to save data on floppy disks and the computer screens only had words, but no pictures.

A NIST Cybersecurity Framework for Everyone: Presenting CSF 2.0

Here are the slides and an annotated copy of the NIST CSF 2.0 in spreadsheet format.

It’s been another busy summer with the DOE cyber workforce development program. I had nine of the most outstanding students I have ever taught. This is like a dream team classroom. Despite being from seven different states from all over the country they have bonded like a cohesive team and are hungry to learn, and I have plenty to feed them.

The first course was introduction to cybersecurity, and I used most of the core material for the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity course, supplemented with numerous work experience stories and an extra focus on NIST documents and working in the federal environment.

At the end of the first class all nine students took the ISC2 CC exam and far exceeded the 50% national average pass rate. The students also built their 3-d printed enigmas.

At the end of July, we wound down in our 10-week program that consists of four cybersecurity classroom courses as well as numerous field trips and lab exercises. We made our way around Aiken, ate out together a few times, did a cyber audit for a small insurance company in town, had guest speakers on OT, heard from one who had experienced disaster recovery, our annual cyber Jeopardy with CIOs from SRS, and the women in cyber panel.

The students presented summaries of their work and experience in a poster session to over 100 colleagues at the end of the summer. Their two posters, entitled “Behind the Breaches” from Intro. to Cybersecurity, and “Hack, Trace and Testify” from Digital Forensics were well received and demonstrates their thorough understanding of the material in the real world.

I am pleased that my students are leaving Aiken this Summer with a certification as well as familiarity with NIST 800-53 and CSF 2.0. I am so happy to see these capable people are going to replace all of us old folks in cyber security. I’m glad I’m retired, because I wouldn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for competition from this young bunch of folks.

I want to thank SRNS IT/Cyber for hosting a Capture the Flag for my interns. Also, over a dozen other professionals from SRS, military, local businesses, and former students are contributing to the enrichment and encouragement of my current students. I cannot emphasize enough how these acts of kindness are remembered by my students, even years later. You can change the cyber and IT world, one person at a time. Read more about our program at

https://www.usca.edu/news/2024/cyber-interns-educate-aiken-rotary-on-data-safety

Well it’s another summer in my retirement and I seem to be teaching classes every time I turn around.

In addition to DOE workforce development internship, I was offered the chance to share teaching a week-long summer camp with Thomas Scott for high school students at the Ruth Patrick science Center at the University of South Carolina Aiken.

The Ruth Patrick Center is a hidden gem in Aiken. here’s more about their camps If you’ve never been to the planetarium or seen telescope you are missing something great. Dr. Gary Senn is an unbelievably creative and dedicated educator.

https://www.usca.edu/rpsec/departments/student-programs/summer-programs/discovery-camps/

Over the five six-hour classes, we covered a wide range of IT and cybersecurity topics. We watched YouTube videos on how scammers work, learned the risk management framework from CSF 2.0, conducted a phishing exercise on their friends (and they all failed), learned binary and ASCII, and then scratched the surface on one of my favorite topics, cryptography.

We started with a secret decoder ring, watched the video on the Enigma and then built our own enigma simulators from 3D printed parts that my son graciously provided to the class.