Idaho Cyber Range Day shows off spectrum of tech research

Students from around the region descended upon the Idaho Central Credit Union Arena in Moscow for Idaho Cyber Range Day on Friday.

University of Idaho students who spent the last year in their senior capstone project had set up tables to display their research, which covered mechanical, civil, electrical and chemical engineering topics.

The keynote address was given by Idaho Power CEO and Vandal alumna Lisa Grow. Grow took over as the CEO in June 2020 and shared some of what Idaho Power was doing for the future. Grow said she got into engineering to solve problems and because she was curious about how things worked.

“I’m going to spend some time today sort of making the case for UI, for those of you who might be kind of deciding where you might go to college,” Grow said. “For those of you that are looking at the workforce, I’m certainly going to make a case for staying in Idaho.”

Grow said originally it wasn’t her plan to stay in Idaho after graduating from the University of Idaho and that she wanted to move to California and work in the growing tech industry. Instead she started a job at Idaho Power and ended up staying for the next 36 years.

Her talk covered how Idaho Power has started expanding both clean energy and storage batteries. She also said that opportunities were expanding in the energy field for all types of science, technology, engineering and mathematics students.

But research was not the only topic on display in the arena. Cybersecurity made an appearance too.

Students from a cybersecurity club had set up a simulation of the work they do. They were presented with a private computer system that had built-in weaknesses, and the students worked to make the system safer.

Ray Anderson, the director of technical services at the UI College of Engineering, said students practice with a private system so as to not impact real businesses or people. The Moscow site was one of eight around the state, with one at each four-year institution and community college in the state.

For Michael Haney, a University of Idaho faculty member at the Idaho Falls campus, Friday’s event was proof the system can work. The Idaho Cyber Range Day was the first time all the participating schools had connected together in a “soft launch” of the program.

Haney was appointed by the President Leadership Council to work with the $1 Million in state funds from 2021. The funds are supposed to go towards supporting infrastructure and new degree and certificate programs.

“Today has been about opening doors to what their education could look like,” Haney said. Idaho Cyber Range day came to be through a partnership between community colleges, universities and colleges across the state to share opportunities in cybersecurity to the next generations.

Across the state, students could participate in different cybersecurity activities like simulations in finding weaknesses in a firewall, hack into a lightbulb or work with forensics.

“It’s more important for today to raise awareness of the different programs and opportunities available,” Haney said.

Kali Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnew.com.