LSU gets elite cyber designation from NSA - which means more grants and research funding

quote:

---

BATON ROUGE – The National Security Agency, or NSA, the nation’s preeminent cybersecurity agency, has designated LSU as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations, or CAE-CO. LSU joins only 21 other universities and colleges in the U.S. with the designation, which is reserved for institutions capable of educating high-performing students and advancing operational technologies and techniques critical to intelligence, military and law enforcement organizations. LSU is the only university in Louisiana to hold the CAE-CO designation. Peers include Carnegie Mellon, New York University, the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy.

The designation will have at least two immediate impacts on LSU students and faculty, according to Professor Golden G. Richard III, director of the LSU Applied Cybersecurity Lab and faculty lead for CAE-CO at LSU.

“For students, this will magnetize LSU as a great choice to study very technical and applied cybersecurity, which now leads to jobs with starting salaries in the six figures,” Richard said. “CAE-CO designation drastically increases the exposure of our program, both nationally and internationally. Importantly, it also gives LSU access to grants that are only available to CAE schools. This means significant pots of money for students, projects and equipment.”

A key requirement for CAE-CO designation is a course in reverse engineering, necessary for deep understanding of how malware operates and how cyberattacks occur.

---

quote:

---

In 2021, LSU was the only university in the nation selected by the NSA to apply for CAE-CO designation, while also helping the agency evaluate its new online application process.

“Some of our previous work with exceptional LSU professors and their institutional knowledge of the CAE-CO program made them a prime candidate to pilot our new designation process,” Smith said. “Now, LSU students will have additional opportunities for scholarships and grants through the Department of Defense Cyber Scholarship Program and CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service.”

The NSA awards three designations as part of its National Centers of Academic Excellence program. The CAE-CO is the most technical, and reserved for institutions like LSU that have demonstrated a deeply interdisciplinary approach to cyber operations in computer science, computer engineering or electricial engineering with extensive opportunities for hands-on applications via labs and exercises. The CAE-CD or Cyber Defense designation, currently held by 355 schools, is awarded to regionally accredited academic institutions that offer cybersecurity degrees or certificates at the associate, bachelor’s or graduate level. Cyber Research, or CAE-R, designation, held by 79 institutions, is awarded to Department of Defense schools and Ph.D.-producing military academies and universities with at least moderate research activity, according to the Carnegie Foundation classification system.

---