A cohort of 10 students from the country of Georgia landed in the region Monday to work on their studies in cybersecurity at Northern Kentucky University.
As a former Soviet republic with 20% of its territory occupied by Russia and its regional challenges neighboring the Russian war in Ukraine, Georgia has prioritized cybersecurity education. St. Andrews Georgian University, founded by the Patriarchate of Georgia, selected NKU as a partner in that education.
“They’re very worried,” NKU Dean of the College of Informatics Kevin Kirby said. “They’re trying to walk a delicate line, but cybersecurity is at the front of this sort of thing, so they want to be trained.”
Kirby said the joint master’s in cybersecurity partnership began last year and allows Georgian students to get 30 credit hours from NKU online, followed by 30 credit hours at St. Andrews Georgian University to meet the European standards for a master’s degree of 60 credits. At the time, NKU was only the second college in the country to participate in this type of partnership with a Georgian university.
St. Andrews Georgian University student Tamar Burjanadze said she had been interested in cybersecurity since she was a teenager, but Georgia didn’t have many opportunities to participate in or learn the field.
“I was honored to be accepted, and come to U.S. was like the perfect, unique experience and opportunity,” Burjanadze said. “Not many people have their university fund everything and then just give you such an opportunity to meet great professionals in one of the leading cybersecurity countries. You cannot find any better place to get this knowledge from and develop your skills.”
Students will be at NKU for two weeks for face-to-face components of the program. Kirby said over the summer, NKU faculty went to Tbilisi, Georgia, to meet with the students, hold workshops, seminars, and office hours to get to know the students and fellow faculty, and the mirror image is happening now in Northern Kentucky.
The students study risk management, intrusion detection, data privacy, etc.
“It’s very 360 degrees, and one of the things that is often misunderstood about cybersecurity nowadays is it just sounds like ‘IT,'” Kirby said. “Like you’re just configuring firewalls and routers in case you don’t want someone hacking into your network. It’s more like being an intelligence analyst.”
He said there are detailed strategies involved that students must learn. Kirby said the cliché is not if you’ll get hacked but when.
“There are public relations involved,” Kirby said, “there’s also risk management, proactive defense, detection remediation, the whole business and societal and even human factor side of cybersecurity. That’s what they’re getting.”
The U.S. Embassy endorses the international partnership.
Kirby said during his first visit to Georgia last summer, with the NKU director of international programs and chair of computer science, they met with the Georgia minister of science education and went to the U.S. Embassy.
“The U.S. government really wants to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Georgia should there be broader geopolitical implications,” Kirby said.
Many students enrolled in the cohort are already experienced information technology professionals in the Georgian public sector; however, Burjanadze received a bachelor’s degree in international relations and self-taught some information technology basics before being accepted into the program.
She said Georgia, even before the war in Ukraine, had problems with Russia. Burjanadze said the first record of cyber warfare occurred during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.
“That really shook the country to make some differences and make cybersecurity more important and to just pay more attention,” she said. “Even now, when Russia became much more threat because it’s in an ongoing war, and it’s next to our country, that’s really present. We are on our toes, kind of waiting every day that it might escalate into something more important and more dangerous.”
Burjanadze said there are few cybersecurity professionals in Georgia currently and thinks this program will significantly help the country.
While the students are still progressing through their seven-week online course, they also take field trips around Cincinnati and indulge in local culture.
They have planned visits to 84.51, a company that leverages data to understand customer and purchase behavior. The technology divisions at 84.51 and Kroger will present to the students how security works at their companies. They also plan to visit St. Elizabeth Healthcare to look at their cybersecurity operations, and US Bank will visit NKU’s cyber lab to give a presentation.
While in town, they are taking a BB Riverboat cruise, having dinner at Coppin’s at Hotel Covington, and visiting local museums, among other things.
“With this knowledge and with this practical experience, and with the so, so deep and good relationship with the U.S., and its actual professionals who work in this field and who have real experience in it will actually help us to help our country,” Burjanadze said. “I think Georgia is a small country, but I think if we develop this field, then we will be able to help ourselves first and then the region.”
