By age 12 he was building websites, a couple years later making video games.

Lego robotics first attracted Harrison Keating to the world of tech. In high school he heard about CyberPatriot, a cybersecurity competition: “We put a team together and none of us really knew what we were doing.” Still, Keating met students with similar interests as his own interest in cybersecurity grew. When he learned there was a collegiate version of the contest, the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, he went to its website, clicked on past winners, and the University of Central Florida popped up the most. “That is how I ended up at UCF.”

“I like building and making things, and software brings so much power to the individual,” the St. Augustine native explains, noting that cellphones today are more powerful than the computers that got us to the moon. “There’s just so many possibilities.”

Keating majored in computer science and recently graduated. He will embark on his cybersecurity master’s degree at UCF this fall. He landed his first security engineering role as an intern, and this past summer he worked in network engineering for IBM Research. Keating is a captain on the 29-member UCF Collegiate Cybersecurity Competition Team that has won 12 national championships since 2014.

Keating and 405 other UCF students are members of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Club @ UCF, unofficially known as Hack@UCF. “It’s just a lot of students who are really passionate about this stuff and care about teaching and passing that knowledge down.”

“I think one of our coolest things is we’re the only club on campus that has their own room.”

Walk into the 970-sq.-ft. Lockheed Martin Cyber Innovation Lab and you’ll see a big screen to teach workshops. It also has its own student-built and student-run private cloud and cyber range, giving club members a secure environment to practice their craft and experiment with new techniques. “These kids are crazy — the kind of work that they’re doing would not be allowed for entry-level people in a real company,” says UCF Computer Science Professor Tom Nedorost. “They’re doing stuff that you’d be doing as a mid-level or a senior engineer — just for fun. And then they provide access to everybody in the club.”

Members of the competition team have jobs guaranteed before they graduate — sometimes multiple offers. Because of their competition experience, they are typically hired directly into mid-level positions as cyber analysts, consultants, penetration testers or vulnerability researchers paying well over six figures to start, and within two to three years, they move into positions with salaries exceeding $200,000.

Adapted from Florida Trend, story by Nancy Dahlberg

In Demand

572,392 Unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. Current cybersecurity professionals fill only 72% of the need.

$89,000 Average entry-level cybersecurity salary can quickly escalate above $100,000 with experience.

“I like building and making things, and software brings so much power to the individual … There’s just so many possibilities.”