Introducing Hood College’s New Cyber & Informatics Lab

Hood College's new Cyber & Informatics lab is a dedicated space for students in the areas of Cybersecurity and Bioinformatics. It was designed to meet the needs of students engaging in security and informatics studies; two areas that have special computer networking, storage capacity and processing requirements.

For students in Cybersecurity, the lab offers a very rich and extensive system and networking infrastructure that allows us to isolate and experiment with numerous security tools and datasets. It provides a unique environment to practice and learn networking, hacking, forensics and cryptography. For the Bioinformatics students, it provides an infrastructure that enables them to access, analyze, build workflows, visualize data, and use tools specific to their discipline.

The lab is designed with certain advanced capabilities such as being able to create virtual local area networks on demand, deploy a multitude of operating systems and tools, handle, analyze and visualize large amounts of data, and simulate the operations of an industry security operations center (SOC). 

The first users of the lab will be Cyber Blazers, our competitive student ethical hacking team as they train to participate in hacking competitions.  In the coming semester the lab will become available for courses in cybersecurity and bioinformatics.  The intention is for the lab to also become available to a wider population of students and programs so everyone in the Hood academic community can benefit from this top-notch facility.

Facilities and infrastructure projects like this work as a capability multiplier for our programs, our students and the College. They enable programs to complement the education of our students with hands-on training and exposure to tools and environments that they would otherwise only experience at the workplace. It is a phenomenal environment for experimentation and learning.

We plan to host cybersecurity training sessions and invite students from local high schools and other regional institutions. Next year we plan to host a nationwide hacking competition.

Inspired to #GOFURTHER in your education to boost your career? Learn more about Hood College graduate programs including the M.S. in Cybersecurity and the M.S in Bioinformatics by clicking here.