NEVER WASTE A BREACH

Virginia Tech students are securing the digital world, guided by some of the founders of modern cybersecurity

When people ask Randy Marchany how he became a cybersecurity expert, they get a starkly pragmatic answer: “Because I got the crap hacked out of me multiple times, and you learn from your mistakes.” As CISO for Virginia Tech, Marchany applies his knowledge and astonishing list of accomplishments in the cybersecurity discipline to educate and inspire, preparing new generations to succeed in an everchanging digital future.

In August, Marchany will celebrate his 49th year working at Virginia Tech, a testament to an educational culture defined by a passion for research and hands-on exploration. “We were involved in a lot of cutting-edge research and our central IT group, where I was, had a hand in a lot of that.”

The university ranks 54th in the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey in the U.S. and is in the top 6% of research expenditures of all the universities in the nation.

“We have a lab associated with the office that we created in 2003 to provide a way for graduate and undergraduate students to do research on any cybersecurity topic. We don’t care what major you’re in as long as you want to do something with cybersecurity,” he said.

In addition to computer science and computer engineering students, political science, business, history, and sociology majors have researched topics such as privacy issues and social media abuse. “My office collects a lot of data on traffic patterns in and out of the university and the lab students have access to anonymized records,” he explained. “It’s been pretty successful for us.” Marchany is co-holder of three cybersecurity patents generated through the lab, which has produced 14 PhD students and 15 Masters students and a host of SANS® Institute members.