Episode 4: Hacking in With the Cybersecurity Club

 In this episode, host Faith Ortega talks with Paul Warner, the advisor of the Cybersecurity Club, and student representatives Faiz Ibrahim and Angelyah Sveum about the club’s mix of learning and recreational opportunities.

Listen in to learn how the club tackles real-world cyber threats, computer operating systems, cyber war competitions, and more!

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
Faith. Hi, and welcome back to the students choice
podcast, where we look into themany paths you can take as a
student at Rowan College atBurlington County, join us as we
investigate different clubs,programs and activities through
the lens of fellow students.It's always your choice, your
voice, our rcbc, hi. I'm FaithOrtega, and I've been a student

(00:22):
at rcbc Since 2022
I graduated in May 2024 with anassociate degree in
Communication Arts. I'mcurrently pursuing a bachelor's
degree in applied professionalcommunication through rcbc and
Rowan's three plus one programthis season on the students
choice podcast, we'll focus onmany rcbc clubs. Rowan College

(00:45):
at Burlington County has acollection of over 40
interactive clubs open to allstudents, from music club to
computer science club tobiochemistry club. Rcbc truly
has it all to dive in. We'lltalk with a different Club's
advisor and student leaders foreach episode. In this episode,
we'll be chatting with thecybersecurity clubs advisor Paul

(01:09):
Warner, President Faiz Ibrihamand Vice President Angelia
Savem. The cybersecurity clubhere at rcbc is open to all
students with an interest intechnological safety. Their
primary goal is to promoteethical security techniques in a
secure environment. Subjectsthey cover include cyber threats

(01:29):
becoming efficient in computeroperating systems like Linux,
pen testing defending networksand taking part in cyber war
games. All right, thank you allfor being here. Would you each
introduce yourselves justbriefly. Hello. My name is Paul
Warner. I am the coordinator forthe cybersecurity program here

(01:51):
at rcbc, and also I am theadvisor for the cybersecurity club.
It's a pleasure being here, andit's a good thing when we could
talk about the great things thatthe club is doing for the
students, and it's student led,it's student run, and the
President and the VicePresident, all of the ones that

(02:12):
we had prior and the ones thatare current are very vested in
this, and their goal is to makesure that they help their father
students and have fun whiledoing it. It's great to have you
here. And would you like tointroduce yourself? Hi. My name
is Angelia. Save them. I amcurrently the vice president of
the cyber security club, as wellas a member of the competition

(02:34):
team. It is a pleasure beinghere, so it's wonderful having
you all here. Faz, Hey, my nameis Fauci Abraham, and I'm here
as the president of thecybersecurity club, and also the
team captain for thecybersecurity competition teams
here at rcbc. It is a pleasurebeing here on this podcast. I
would like to share whatcybersecurity has to offer to

(02:55):
our listeners and have themreally look into the side of it
that many people overlook, yeah,for sure, I think after this
podcast, a lot of people willknow a lot more about the club
and definitely, maybe even wantto join to start. I'd like to
ask all of you just a generalquestion, why and when did your
journey start at rcbc, and whathas your experience been like so

(03:17):
far? So my journey actuallystarted way back in 2017 after I
first graduated. At the time, Ireally didn't know what I was
doing. I didn't know what Iwanted to get into, so I kind of
took a I started rcbc, and Ididn't do very well, so I took a
break, and then I came back andI found a newly lit interest in

(03:38):
cybersecurity, and I reallywanted to pursue it. And
luckily, I found myself in avery like minded group of people
that were willing to go the samelengths and try to educate
themselves on cybersecurity ingeneral. And I got very lucky
and fell in with this crowd. Andis that your degree path as
well? Yeah, that is my degreepath as well. I'm majoring in

(04:00):
cybersecurity, and I'm prettysure most of the people in our
team are also majoringcybersecurity. Gotcha. And is
that your degree path as well?And yeah, and what has your
experience been like so far atrcbc? Weirdly enough, I would
never trade it for the worldlike I would never go to a four
year compared to here, becausethe friends I've met, the
people, the staff, everyone theyit's been a dream. Usually, you

(04:23):
hear horror stories of collegeprofessors not doing the work,
not putting in the effort. Here,every teacher has a genuine love
and passion that they give totheir students. So it has been
wonderful being here. Yeah, Ifeel that I've sometimes I think
that there's a stigma againstcommunity colleges, but there is
just such a sense of belonginghere. I don't know if you guys

(04:44):
feel that as No, I feel thesame. I feel that. Yeah, I
definitely feel that. And whathas your experience been like so
far at rcbc? Well, I startedhere in 2017 and
the program has you.
Journeyed a long way.
We have a long way more to go.

(05:05):
Our goal is, and when I startedhere, the goal is to
have the rcbc cyber securityprogram the number one program
in the country.
We're now number one in thestate. We've entered
competitions. We have blown alot of schools away that people
would think that a communitycollege would not do.

(05:29):
The other thing is,
we have great students here, andone of my personal goal when I
started here, I told our dean is
the way people look at communitycolleges when they think of rcbc
and what we do here, especiallyin our cybersecurity program,

(05:52):
they'll think different. Yeah,and that has changed
the response we've gotten fromstudents in all walks of life,
from all over the world. I getemails from students all over
the world how they would liketo, you know, come and join our
cybersecurity program. And thatis, to me, a testament, not just

(06:15):
of what myself do, but what thecybersecurity community as a
whole does, and later on, we'lltalk about some of the other
things that we have implementedthat has propelled us to where
we are today. Wow, really seemslike we found a little hidden
gem here at rcbc with the cybersecurity program and the club

(06:39):
and everything. So this is morefor you guys, but how important
do you think extracurricularparticipation is for student
success, especially you guys asstudents, I would honestly say
nowadays, it vastly overweighsjust going to college, because
almost everybody has anassociate's degree. Nowadays,

(06:59):
almost everybody has gotten somekind of education, but I feel
like what people are looking fornowadays is that curiosity, that
aspect that drives you to gofurther beyond just your
curricular activities, just yourschoolwork, and to go outside of
that. That means that youactually have a passion for what
you're doing, and that's whatpeople care about, especially

(07:20):
for us chasing thesecompetitions. The first one that
I ever did, I didn't even knowwhat I was getting into. It was
just kind of brought up as asuggestion in the middle of
class by Professor Nabeel bag atthe time, he just brought it up
and he said, Hey, there's thiscompetition. If you want to
participate in it, go ahead. AndI just jumped into it. I didn't
know what I was doing, but wegot 17th place in that first one

(07:45):
ever, and it kind of lit a fireunder me to do better, because I
wanted that score to be higher.I wanted to do better, right? So
it's kind of feeding yourpassion, yeah. What about you?
So I agree with fauz on that ofit almost overweighs the
education. The education here ata college is very, very
important, but it really do. Itdoes depend on the community

(08:08):
that you do join, because, likefaz said, you need that passion.
You can get a degree, andsometimes you're not even into
it. You don't feel the passion,the love, the willingness to
learn, and that's what companiesare looking for. That's what
employers are looking for. So bycoming here and having a place,
a community to be in, that'ssuch a powerful thing, yeah,
it's definitely gotten me to bemore driven. And I feel like I

(08:31):
speak for the team when I saywatching each other work hard on
something or try to figure outan issue together drives us all
to do better and drives us allto learn more. It's not fun just
learning RCB at rcbc or anywhereby yourself. You want to be with
people. You want to be withpeople who share those passions,
who want to get into the samekind of degrees as you, and they

(08:54):
do the same kind of work, andyou can kind of share in the
accomplishment when you doaccomplish something together,
right? Do you feel like being apart of the club like you have
has helped maybe making friendsas well 100% Oh, of course,
yeah, not just friends, but theyalmost feel like family. Now,
yes, I can't really think of alife without my current team and

(09:16):
the current people that I havein my you know, with my friends,
it's kind of not the samewithout them ever, and the
experiences and memories thatwe've had, they're priceless.
How do you feel? Extracurricular participation is
important to studentssuccessful. So one of the things
I'm going to add here is, whatdid rcbc and President COC and

(09:40):
the team here at rcbc had helpedfoster for us to have what we
have, and for the students to beable to give the testimony that
they're giving. And one of thethings that we did here is that
we completely, like I said, itwas a journey. We completely
revamp the entire technology.
Classroom here at rcbc,

(10:03):
one of the things that the teamhas, that we talk about all the
time, and even students fromother colleges, once they
interact with them, always saysthat we don't have what you guys
have. And one of the things thatwe have, we have real world
equipment the students do cloudcourses. But if a student wants

(10:24):
to work on a real firewall, theclub, they have a room they go
in. They could practice workingon a real firewall. They could
practice working on a realserver. They could practice
doing actual cabling. We haveall the equipment, all the
necessary tools that you couldhave that will propel you, not
just in cybersecurity, but innetworking, in programming. So

(10:48):
we have hands on. When we talkabout hands on, we give hands
on, not just in the classroom,but they have it to use as
extracurricular activity.Currently, they do the
cybersecurity club on Fridays.
I stopped in there on last week,Friday, and they were actually

(11:11):
doing cabling workshop
teaching. They were teachingtheir fellow students how to do
cabling. So the cybersecurityclub is not just about you
showing up. You join a club.They help you with class work.
So if somebody needs extra helpwith something in class, the
club assists them. If

(11:32):
somebody is going for a job andthey need to get some skills in
understanding a server or ESXior a firewall, they could stop
into that room and get the helpthey need. So the club health
facilitates a lot of this, andthey're actually designing,
right now, an entire environmentfor students to use, wow, and to

(11:54):
add on to that, the club is notonly teaching people
cybersecurity aspects andinformation security, but we are
also taking steps to have it bemore viable and more useful to
everyday people as well. Sowe're teaching people how to
manage their data better. We'reteaching people how to take care
of themselves online andpractice good data hygiene,

(12:16):
because that is very importantas cyber crime becomes more and
more prevalent. So not only willwe teach people cabling and
we'll teach people firewalls,but we also teach people how to
read phishing emails. We teachpeople to be skeptical. We teach
people to look at things fromthis outsider perspective that
helps you look on the overview,how to approach a situation and

(12:38):
how to kind of through the mindof a cybersecurity professional
address a situation, and I heardyou guys mention a few terms,
like cabling and firewalls. Canyou guys maybe go into a little
information about what that isfor maybe someone who doesn't
have that expertise in thecybersecurity field? Yeah, so

(13:01):
I'll start with firewalls. Butfirewalls are basically a set of
rules that is made by a computerso that certain things can be
filtered in and out. So it couldfilter in certain types of data,
maybe like a message that'sbeing received, but it will
filter out suspiciousactivities, certain things like
ping, where you ping a computerto see if it's working and it's

(13:24):
up. But in some cases, attackerswill use that as a means to
overload your computer and forceit to shut off or go offline.
And with cabling, it's just thecat five or cat six ethernet
cables we were teaching peoplehow to actually make those.
Because you can make those. Youcan get some wire, and you can

(13:46):
get the little ends of it, andyou can actually learn how to
make it. There's straightthrough cables, and there's also
crossover cables, so there'sdifferent kind of cables, and we
teach people how to make them byhand. We had everybody sitting
together, cutting cable, makinga mess, but it was really fun.
We got to do it. We got to testout the cables and see that they

(14:07):
work. And they're just like, thesame cables that you would see
at your home, connected to yourrouter, connected to your
computer. Wow. So this stuff isreally, you know, hands on,
material. I guess I didn'trealize you're actually working
with things that you know youcan touch and feel like we
brought up the tool set, webrought up the cables, and we
were just getting to work, Paul,did you have something to add?

(14:29):
And one of the other things is,what I'm going to say is,
most of our students thatgraduate that were part of the
cyber security club the last twopresidents.
Two, three presidents areactually employed. One is
currently looking for a jobright now. But,

(14:51):
yeah, but we had fourpresidents, three right now
employed, and some of the mostof the students from the clubs
that have graduated.
Graduated have fine jobs. Sothat is something I'm happy to
say. So the skills that they'relearning is transitional. You
could actually take it to thereal world and actually do the

(15:12):
job. So when you go to a jobsite and somebody says, Hey,
could you pull me a cable? Couldyou make me a cable? Could you
jump on that firewall? They cando it, and they has limited
transition to training becausethey're learning the skills here
before they step out there.Yeah, one of the people that we
actually had help us with thecabling project that we were

(15:34):
doing together was someonecurrently employed in one of the
Burlington County governmentfacilities, and they actually do
that stuff all the time, so theywere able to kind of guide us
through the process and teach ussome of the little tips and
tricks that they use to get itdone. Wow. So this is really a
tool you could use if you're inthis degree path and you want to

(15:55):
get ahead, you want to getexperience so that you can get a
career in this field easily andhave that experience before
you've even started. That'sabsolutely true, and that was
the original idea of thecybersecurity club.
The first president,
his goal, or his intention, wasto get a group of students

(16:20):
together with the same skill,with skill set and anything that
they wanted to learn, to givethem the opportunity to learn
different things. Because he wasseeking knowledge, and he didn't
have all the knowledge, butthere were other students that
had the knowledge. So he waslike, You know what, Professor
Warner, can we start a club? Andthis was all the way back in

(16:42):
2017 2018
and that's how the club formed.And those guys took it, and then
we had women. We have a lot ofwomen now that are part of the
club. We have alumni thatactually are part of the club.
When they graduate, they stilldrop, they still show up. They
still show up.

(17:03):
So it's it's not just studentsthat are here, it's past
students, and we're working onmaking sure that we incorporate
that, and that's why they'rebuilding a platform now that's
going to help incorporate all ofthose students that graduated
six years ago, seven years ago,and then we could bring all of
those students back, and theycould help foster, you know, the

(17:24):
type of energy and relationshipsthat could help current students
now get jobs out there andinteract and all those different
things. Yeah, and like Paulsaid, how it started. It's a
bunch of like mindedindividuals, a bunch of people
in cyber security who gottogether and shared their
knowledge. And I wanted to notonly continue that, but I wanted
to really expand the club to bemore appealing to just the

(17:47):
average person as well, so thatanybody can get some kind of use
out of it. Anybody that shows upto our club, nobody will be left
in the dust, or nobody will besitting there asking questions
or not knowing what's going on.Everything is explained very,
very like tedious on thedetails, we make sure that
everybody is caught up andeverybody's at the same level,

(18:09):
and we try to make sure thatwhen we're going through these
projects, everybody's followingalong, and that even the average
person can gain some kind ofinformation, that they can
actually go and apply in thereal world, in the real time, in
the real life, towards theirlife. I think what's wonderful
about the club is that it reallyis for any age, even if you're

(18:31):
an alumni, even if you're acurrent student, regardless if
you we have a Discord serverthat we open to anyone,
and it has all the resources forcareers, for if you want to make
your own virtual machines, ifyou want to play around with it,
ways that you can navigatethrough the internet, regarding
how to get these tools, all ofthat. So I think it's a
wonderful thing for the cluboverall. And they do have a lot

(18:55):
of resources. Yeah, one of thethings I'm proud of is because
if in this field, you have toknow how to go out and get stuff
on your own and figure stuff outon your own. And the club also
help facilitates that. It helpsgive you know students the
ability to be able to researchand do a lot of things on their
own and be able to cipherthrough attacks and all the cool

(19:17):
stuff that they do. And one ofthe great things about the club
is this is where the actual, youknow, I call them the dream
team, our dream team, our cybersecurity, Dream Team,
competition team, actuallyderived from so the team
actually practice a lot of theskills they do during club

(19:38):
hours. So they build and theytest and they do everything
during club hours, so you're notjust coming there. And then the
other thing I see that they do alot of, because I drop in, you
know, a couple of times theyplay games. Yeah, it's not, it's
not just, you know, oh, it'sjust technology stuff. And you
just go in there and burn yourhead and, you know, no, no, no,
no. They go in there, they playgames.

(20:00):
Games.
So when you go there, it's, it'sa fun it's, if you just want to
relax, you just go to a club.When they finish, you just relax
and play games where they wereplaying. Oh no, I think it was,
yeah, no, to me, to me, itreally feels like, like, once
you're in the cyber securityclub, and once you're a part of
this, like, big friend group, ishow I see it. You're not really

(20:21):
out of it, because even alumniare still coming back and
hanging out with us. We gotthree alumnis up in the room
with us playing games. And youknow, sometimes we hook up the
switch to the projector andwe'll play Mario Kart, and we'll
play all these kinds of games.I'm also thinking about opening
up a Minecraft cyber securityclub server, because I can run
servers, and I will actuallyteach people how to also run

(20:44):
their own servers. There's a lotof skills that you can learn,
and there's a lot of fun thatyou can have when you're in a
cyber security club. It doesn'thave to be directly tied to
cyber security. As long asyou're having fun and you're
enjoying the community and talkabout it a little bit, it's for
everyone. Yeah, we do reallywant to open up to everybody and
just have because I really dobelieve that even the average

(21:06):
person can benefit so much fromjust knowing a little bit more
about cybersecurity, absolutelyright? So it's a little bit of
both. You're having fun, you'relearning and you're gaining
experience. It's like and makingfriends. Yeah, the most
important one, yeah. So I knowfaz, we were talking about this
a little bit the other day, butfor the listeners right now, are

(21:27):
there some tips that you cangive them about staying safe
online and in the real world?Oh, of course, I could go about
this all day. Ange knows. So oneof the biggest tips that I give
people is, let's say you aresigning up for an account, and
they ask you the three securityquestions. Everybody gets the
three security questions. Don'tput in actual information there.

(21:48):
Let's say you have a dog. Let'ssay the dog's name is floofy,
right? And so you put floofy,your beloved, dear dog, as one
of the security quest that oneof the security question
answers. Now let's say anattacker is trying to gain
access to your account. They seethose three questions, they can
phone in home. You know, theycan find your number. It's not
that hard to find people'snumbers and call up. And let's

(22:12):
say a family member picks up,and they pretend to be a
veterinarian, and they go onabout, oh, we have a we have an
appointment here for your dog.What's their name again? And
then let's say your familymember doesn't really know any
better, and they answer thattheir name is fluffy. They're
like, Okay, thank you. Yeah, flufees appointment is now set, and
we'll be looking forward tohearing more from you. Thank you

(22:33):
for answering a call. They hangup. Nobody's the wiser. But now
an attacker has one of the threekey components to accessing your
account, all they would need istwo more answers, which are
usually pretty easy. It'ssomething like, where are you
born, or what is your father'sname? And it's these are
questions that I believe peopleshould be answering wrong with

(22:55):
the made up answers that onlythey know, as opposed to
publicly available informationthat people can get pretty
easily. There's also another onewhere I would urge people to use
a comma in their passwords,because when a data breach
happens, all of thisinformation, the accounts, the

(23:15):
passwords, they're dumped onto aCSV file, and it is used in
Excel. And what commas do inExcel is they kind of shift the
part to a different cell. Solet's say you put a comma in the
middle of your password. Nowhalf of your password is in a
different cell, and the nextpassword is cut off weird into

(23:36):
your password, and then so itmesses up the entire document.
So you really want to make surethat your passwords are not only
complex, not only above 12characters long, and feature
various numbers, lower case,upper case, letters and symbols,
but a comma in there is prettyhelpful. Wow. The comma one, I

(23:58):
will say, I would have neverthought of that in a million
years. I think that's reallycool. The first one you
mentioned with putting falsequestions, that's such a common
sense thing, but I have 100%
made that mistake, and I betthat's, you know, gotten even
worse with social media, likeyou were saying, you know, you
could call the house ask for thedog's name. It's probably not

(24:20):
even that hard. If you havelike, an Instagram, a Facebook
and you're posting your cutelittle dog, they can just find
it there. They can look it up onthe internet. That's actually a
way that threat actors. It'scalled social engineering, where
they will use pieces of yoursocial media. They'll call you
up like faz was talking about.They could say that it's a dog's
appointment. In reality, they'rejust trying to get that

(24:42):
information. To put it into yoursecurity question. And one of
the other things is use asentence as your password.
It's hard for anybody to guess asentence.
One of the things we encourageand a sentence would easily give
you over 12 characters. Yeah,and I would.
Also say use like, I know it'shard for some people to memorize

(25:04):
the same exact like, I know, Iknow everybody uses the same
password for multiple things.That's we can get that out of
the way, right? We can comeclean with that. But what I
would suggest is at least use adifferent variation of that
password, maybe change up acertain letter into a symbol, or
change up. So it's kind of okay,in a sense, because I know
there's it's hard to compromisebetween use a different password

(25:26):
for everything or use onepassword for everything. Well,
the compromise is use the samepassword, quote, unquote. But
it's different. It hasvariations depending on where it
is or depending on what kind ofattributes you want to apply to
it just kind of vary it up alittle bit so that it's harder
to get in. Because what hackerswill do after they get your

(25:48):
account is they will search farand wide on anything else that
your credentials will work on.So let's say your Snapchat gets
hacked, and your password andyour username are now at the
mercy of whoever hacked it. Theywill take that information and
they will try it everywhereelse, Facebook, Instagram,

(26:09):
banks. They will try yourinformation everywhere else to
see what other access it cangive them, because that's what
is called lateral movement,where they will actually move
from account or service toservice to actually try to get
more on you. Wow. So it seemslike when you're thinking about
passwords, choose something thatyou know isn't associated with

(26:32):
you can't be searched for you.And I think the you know
advice you gave about doing aphrase is actually really smart,
because you could just do like asilly little phrase you know
only you know about, and no onewould guess that right to add on
to that, also using two factorauthentication. You know, when
you go into Google and they'relike, is this you we sent it to

(26:53):
your Gmail so you can presslike, yes or no, having that
enabled, as well as having anauthenticator app, if you attach
your account to an authenticatorapp, it will send a series of
pins, a series of numbers thatis only there for 30 seconds,
and then it refreshes so ithelps the red actors not be able

(27:15):
to compromise your accountquickly. And the other thing is
just to let you know, the cybersecurity Club does have a
training on Password. We call itsecurity awareness training.
They have done it before.They've done it for students and
visitors that come on campus,and they have a link that's open
to the public, and anyone couldgo and see how if their password

(27:37):
is strong, if it's not strong.And so they do do a training on
security we call IT security wecall IT security awareness
training. So we did a series onPassword training. They're going
to create one on email security.They're going to create one on
social media, social socialmedia security. So anything with
those things, so look out forthose things, and it's all
coming from the cyber securityclub, and it'll help you stay

(28:00):
safer in your day to day lifeand be way less likely to be a
victim of either identity fraudor identity theft. Exactly
right. So anyone listening rightnow can get help with this
issue.
One last thing I wanted to touchon. One of my questions was,
what is your favorite memory orproudest accomplishment with the

(28:21):
club. I know you guys haveentered cyber defense
competitions, both national andregional, and actually won
awards. I would love to hearmore about that. Well,
definitely, I would say one ofmy proudest achievement ever,
and I loved having the team byme at that moment, is when we
won second place in a NationalCyber Security tournament, the

(28:45):
cyber watch league tournament,and we were there all together,
and we were just all having thebest day of our lives. This is
this is our work has come tofruition. This is hours and
hours of practicing and workingtogether and doing drills and
staying up cramping the nightbefore. Like, this was a lot of

(29:07):
stuff that we put energy andeffort into, and we were
watching it finally prosper, andwatching it finally become
something bigger than just us.Like, at that point, we knew
that we've kind of crossed acertain threshold to where we
feel like we're doing a goodjob.
I'm I have the same exact pickwhere it really is our

(29:30):
competition. Memories of beingfirst in regionals for the same
competition, as well as beingsecond in nationals. Again, I
would say this all the time.Community is everything. So when
we heard that we got first andsecond, it wasn't just about
winning, it was more so of like,everything we've done together,
everything we've built up tothis moment, actually paid off.

(29:51):
And us sticking together reallyjust had us push through. And I
try to harp on this all thetime, that community is so
important, especially being in acollege.
Much, because I would never giveup the friendships and the bonds
I've had. Yeah, and I feel like,especially in the cybersecurity
field, not many people put thatmuch attention on community,
because when you think ofcybersecurity, or you think of

(30:13):
any kind of IT professional, youthink they're more secluded,
they're more working alone. Butteam aspects, especially in
cybersecurity, are bigger thanever. You're never just working
by yourself, and that's why ourteam has done so well, is
because we have members withvarious skills, and we have
members who can catch thingsthat other people may not catch,

(30:34):
and we have each person kind ofis delegated to their own work.
So I'm what they dubbed me, likethe windows wizard, because I'm
mostly working on Windows. Wegot the Linux legend over here,
and because she works a lot withLinux. So every single person
has, like, their own delegation.My friend Roy, he works a lot in
firewalls. He knows more aboutfirewalls than any of us, and we

(30:57):
doubt him, the firewall fiend,like that's what he does. So we
kind of help teach each otherwhen we have these different
aspects, we don't justspecialize. We also generalize.
We give each other a little bitof knowledge on every topic. So
that way, each person still hastheir specialization, but we
also have our general knowledgethat we can back up and work on

(31:20):
other systems, that way we cankind of swap who goes where, and
it would kind of be fun, right?We did that the competition
actually, where we weren't,like, for our cyber defense
competition, we weren't all justsitting down. We were kind of
just rotating everywhere. Oflike, Hey, can you check this
out? Oh, it's actually this. Andyou're like, Oh, thanks for the
second look. So it's, it'shaving that bond is so good

(31:42):
because you can just really haveanother person right behind you.
Just, yeah, support. I think wewere one of the only teams that
I've noticed like, kind ofgetting up and shifting around a
lot more than the other ones. Ithink at a certain point, one of
the instructors, like, told oneof our teammates to, like, sit
down in a chair, like we'rehelping each other out. We're
working as a team. We're workingas a unit. And even though we

(32:04):
had discord open to communicatewith each other, it was more
efficient to just kind of moveover and just show this person
that. And that's why you'llnotice that the cybersecurity
club is not really availableonline with our meetings,
because we really do preferpeople show up in person and
learn this stuff in person,because some stuff you can't
really show or communicatethrough a screen, right? I think

(32:27):
that is a big difference to justseeing people face to face and
truly making that connection,whether it's just for
friendships or networking. Itreally is a big difference
rather than being online. Yeah,and it feels amazing, you know,
that moment that we all foundout that we were second place,
we all just jumped up in joy,and it was just so hype, and we

(32:50):
were so happy. And it wasn'tjust like, it was just like a
group of friends that made itthat's what it felt like. It was
like, well, we heard that wewon. It wasn't like we won. It
was more like we're all huggingright now. We're we gotta, we
gotta group up, we gotta do abig hug. And we realized we did.
We did this in front of, like,other competitors. And I wished
everybody that some people, theygot scoliosis.

(33:14):
Wow, that sounds like such anincredible moment, honestly. Um,
just lastly, to wrap it up, ifyou would each, if you could
tell a student
why they should join the cybersecurity Club today. What would
you say?
I would say, Join cyber securityclub, just not to be just aware,

(33:36):
but just to, like, see thecommunity that we have here. So
it's, it is cyber security. Clubis about cyber security, but it
also is like fostering acommunity, and just it's about
community exactly you.
And the other thing that I wouldlike to add on top of that is
cyber security club is not justa place to learn, it's a place

(33:57):
to have fun, it's a place tomake memories. It's a place to
have experiences with other likeminded people, regardless of
what major. We have people whogo to other majors, or we have
even people who don't even go tothis school anymore, like we
said, alumni who still attendthe cyber security club. And
we're getting more and morepeople that are outside of the

(34:17):
career field, because theyrealize information security is
important, but having fun isjust as important. And each
member of the team, I would say,provides a certain chaos to the
group. I don't know how toexactly explain it, but it's
like in a good way. It's like afun kind of way, and it's
awesome just being around thepeople and just feeling like it

(34:40):
just clicks, right? It's, it wasfunny, because it transferred so
well that even in ourcompetition, one of the people
handling the competition came upto us and went, You guys are the
funnest team we've ever had. Sowe're all very chaotic. And if
you want to come in and join theclub, you can be chaotic too,
just you're good.
Join

(35:01):
any last words, and they said itbest, it's a community, and
that's that was the goal of theclub. And I'm happy that
students, not me, students, aresaying it's a community, right?
And what I'll say to anybody is,if you want to have fun, you
want to learn. You want to kickback and laugh. I've seen

(35:25):
students that come to this clubthat never used to speak to
anybody. I've been teaching herefor over seven and a half years,
and some students never theywould sit all by themselves. And
as soon as they got into theclub, it's like a whole
different atmosphere. They'retalking, they're laughing,
they're chilling out. They comeand say, Hey, Professor Warner,
they're coming into class givingme a pound that never give me a

(35:48):
pound before. So So again,
I'm very proud of what you know,past presidents, current
president, and we are looking toactually build this and take
this beyond what we have here atrcbc. We want to get more
individuals, people, maybe fromthe community, involved coming
in and being part of this club,because it is a community, and

(36:11):
I'm happy that we have achievedthat, but we need to maintain it
and continue doing it right. Sothanks guys, thanks for the work
you do. Thanks to all the pastpresidents. I'm very proud of
you guys. I am very, very proudof them. So as an as a faculty,
as a representative of theschool, and I speak not on
behalf of just myself, but thedean, the Associate Dean, the

(36:33):
president, the board they'vepresented to the board.
We're very proud of them. Andthank you guys. I remember,
actually, the day when we gotsecond place, we called
Professor Warner,
and I've never heard him get soloud in my life. Like, don't get
me wrong, when he teaches, he'spretty loud. You can hear him

(36:54):
from outside. You can get a freelecture, actually, if you're in
the tech building at any point,if Professor Warner is teaching,
you got a free lecture on allfloors. He's pretty loud. He
goes on about he's passionateabout it. It's awesome. But that
day on the phone, he was soloud, it was amazing. And it
felt like this. You know, I lookup to him a lot. I respect him a
lot. I really want to be morelike him when it comes to cyber

(37:17):
security. So having him be proudof us. That felt like that, felt
like one of the biggestachievements ever. He's not
always proud.
I fully agree. So if you're outthere and you're thinking about
joining the cyber security club,it's a really exciting, fun
experience. It sounds like ifyou just want to learn, if you

(37:38):
want to gain some experience, orsometimes,
if you want to have a snack, Iguess there's no to food, no
alcohol, no alcohol.
We bring in snacks. We bring incookies. It's a fun time. It's a
polite fun time. Yeah, it's apolite fun time. All right, so

(38:00):
thank you for listening today.As we learned about the cyber
security club, you can find moreinformation about them through
the student clubs and activitiestile on your barren one account.
You can check out the studentschoice podcast at
rcbc.edu/podcast,
or wherever you get yourpodcasts. If you're an rcbc club

(38:21):
member and you'd like to be on afuture episode, fill out the
application located on thercbc.edu/podcast
page. I'm Faith Ortega, andremember your choice, your
voice, our rcbc. You.