Oregon State’s ORTSOC is preparing students for a rapidly evolving cybersecurity threat landscape

Every year, hundreds of ransomware attacks hit hospitals, school districts, and local governments across the United States. Many of these organizations have neither the budget to hire dedicated security staff nor the expertise to defend themselves. At Oregon State University, a growing number of students are doing something about it — and getting a world-class education in the process.

ORTSOC, the nation’s first cybersecurity teaching hospital^TM, is the backbone of OSU's cybersecurity practicum program, and provides a year-long clinical experience in which senior computer science students provide real managed security services to real clients — school districts, municipalities, and other public entities that would otherwise be left to fend for themselves. Since launching as a formal practicum pathway in 2023, ORTSOC has grown from roughly 30 students to 90 this year and now serves more than 20 client organizations across Oregon and Washington.

“ORTSOC has established itself as the state’s flagship program for developing practicing security professionals,” said ORTSOC advisory board member Steve Person, Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations at Cambia Health Solutions. “By combining academic rigor with operational experience, the program is building Oregon’s next generation of security leaders while actively defending the state’s critical infrastructure. As the program expands to serve more organizations each year, the impact grows exponentially.”

That growth reflects a broader reality: cybersecurity threats are increasing in scale, sophistication and urgency. “The volume of attacks just keeps increasing—it’s relentless,” said Dave Nevin, ORTSOC’s director. At the same time, new tools are reshaping the landscape. “We’re starting to see attackers use AI more, which adds another layer of complexity.”

A practicum built for the real world

ORTSOC students don't simulate threats — they face them. Spending 10 to 12 hours per week across clinical rotations in network security monitoring, penetration testing, security engineering, threat intelligence, and incident response, students handle genuine alerts from live client networks. This year alone, ORTSOC intercepted at least one ransomware attack before it could trigger, stopped data from being exfiltrated to a malicious IP address, and caught multiple unauthorized remote access attempts — protecting the people served by those institutions in the process.

“This is the first program like this in the nation,” said instructor Brandon Ellis, ORTSOC's penetration testing lead and a former Oregon State graduate student who helped build the program from the ground up. “A lot of other universities are very interested in it.”

For students, ORTSOC provides a direct pathway from interest to impact. Many begin in general computer science before discovering cybersecurity through coursework.

Alexa Baruela, a fourth-year computer science student, said her interest in the field grew after taking an early cybersecurity course and connecting with ORTSOC mentors. That exposure helped translate classroom concepts into real-world practice. Barrelo, who is a member of the OSU Security Club and also co-leads OSU's Women in Cybersecurity student chapter and has competed in national competitions, credits the community as much as the curriculum: “There’s a very big overlap. A lot of people here go to security club or Women in Cybersecurity or both.”

Others are drawn by the field’s broader implications. Ariana Valencia described being motivated by the idea of applying technology in ways that connect to fairness and accountability. “I was intrigued by the idea that cybersecurity can support a kind of justice within technology,” she said.

Across the cohort, students share a sense that cybersecurity is both intellectually engaging and professionally promising. “It’s like solving a constantly changing puzzle,” Nevin said. “That’s part of what draws students in — it’s challenging, and it matters.”

Matthew Martin, also a fourth-year student, discovered a deep interest in security engineering — the behind-the-scenes infrastructure work that makes a security operations center function.

Ellis puts the student experience in stark terms: “They get almost a year of hands-on experience doing roles that are more entry-level, so they can use that as evidence that they've already performed these entry-level positions and could be candidates for junior positions — or even leapfrog them entirely.” Many ORTSOC alumni, he notes, are already outearning their former instructors.

Oregon’s cybersecurity mission

ORTSOC's reach extends well beyond the classroom. OSU is a co-lead of the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, established through House Bill 2049, which coordinates cybersecurity workforce development, community outreach, and protective services for public entities statewide. ORTSOC is a direct expression of that mission — providing security monitoring to organizations that fall below the scope of the state's chief information security office.

“We are doing both workforce development and meeting the service mission of the center through this program,” said Rakesh Bobba, associate director of the OCCOE and a professor in OSU's cybersecurity program. With an estimated 4,000 to 7,500 cybersecurity job openings in Oregon at any given time — and roughly half a million unfilled positions nationally — the stakes are significant.

Bryce Schroeder, Vice President of Customer Security & Trust for ServiceNow and an industry partner of ORTSOC, sees it as a genuine solution to a structural problem: “The challenge isn’t just numbers — it's readiness. We need professionals who can contribute from day one: respond under pressure, communicate with impacted customers, understand how a real SOC operates. ORTSOC delivers that through hands-on experience.”

Eyes on the future

The most urgent challenge on the horizon is the rise of AI-enabled attacks. Adversaries are already leveraging artificial intelligence to discover software vulnerabilities and generate exploits at speeds no human analyst can match. Meanwhile, the impending viability of quantum computing threatens to break the cryptographic foundations that secure everyday internet commerce.

“AI-enabled threats and the speed and scale that AI brings to attacks — that’s the biggest concern,” Bobba said. ORTSOC is actively working to weave AI-assisted defense tools into student training, threading the needle between foundational skills and cutting-edge capability.

Ellis agrees the disruption is already underway. “State-sponsored agents are using AI to launch autonomous attacks with no human in the loop,” he said. “The landscape is already changing.”

OSU’s response is ambitious. In addition to expanding ORTSOC — including launching an Oregon State Ecampus online cohort this fall — the university is developing Master of Engineering, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees in cybersecurity, with a professional doctorate on the horizon. K-12 outreach programs are training middle and high school teachers to bring cybersecurity into their classrooms early.

Schroeder sees OSU’s positioning as unique. “OSU’s leadership and capability in AI enables them to address both Oregon's security needs and the broader global talent crisis,” he said. “That’s how you build real resilience and a solid reputation.”