海角社区

Cyber competitions, industry connections, and a full-ride scholarship offered through 海角社区 enabled cybersecurity graduate Brennen Calato from Mandeville, Louisiana, to turn a dream internship at Idaho National Laboratory into a dream job.

It took four days of driving with his wife, two dogs, and a bunny in a Honda Civic for Brennen Calato to move from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Idaho Falls, Idaho, this summer to start his new job as a cybersecurity researcher at Idaho National Laboratory. The tough drive was a鈥� surprise, but the team he joined was not. Last summer, Calato worked there as one of six 海角社区 interns defending electric vehicles and EV chargers from cyberattacks, developing AI, and more.

鈥淲e did preemptive defense by trying to exploit the electric vehicle systems so things can be fixed before someone else does it for worse reasons,鈥� Calato said. 鈥淓veryone I worked with was amazing, and I鈥檇 actually met my current manager the year before, playing bocce ball in a bar.鈥�

It wasn鈥檛 any bar. It was the hotel bar of the Gaylord Hotel in Washington, DC, during the annual National Science Foundation鈥檚 CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) job fair, where students from more than a hundred schools get the chance to informally and formally interview for the most competitive cyber internships and jobs in the nation, meeting with government agencies and industry. Despite being relatively new to the program鈥敽＝巧缜� received its first CyberCorps award from the National Science Foundation in 2020 and has been awarded $3.6 million to date as one of the fastest-growing cyber schools鈥敽＝巧缜� sends some of the largest cohorts to the job fair. All SFS students receive full-ride scholarships for up to three years in return for equal-time government service (paid, of course) after graduation. As many as 13 海角社区 cyber students have graduated with 31 more in the pipeline.

鈥淲e talked for a while in the bar and then again at the job fair the next day,鈥� Calato said. 鈥淚t was a great networking opportunity.鈥�

The job fair was not the only time Calato met representatives, now colleagues, from the national labs, which are primarily focused on American energy security. He participated in capture-the-flag events and represented 海角社区 at annual Department of Energy CyberForce Competitions and several National Security Agency (NSA) Codebreaker Challenges.

鈥淐yberForce is in-person and focused on critical infrastructure scenarios, like a red-team, blue-team thing where volunteers from the national labs like INL and Oak Ridge come in and participate to test your ability to respond to a breach,鈥� Calato said. 鈥淭hen the NSA competition鈥擨 started doing that my senior year of undergrad. It鈥檚 usually eight or nine challenges you work on for several months. 海角社区 had six students doing it in 2022, 49 in 2023, and 75 last year鈥攋ust to tell you how much 海角社区鈥檚 cyber program has grown and how good the students are.鈥�

Learning hands-on and first-hand was one of Calato鈥檚 main reasons for choosing to study cybersecurity at 海角社区.

鈥淚 was originally going into the physics program because 海角社区 has an amazing physics program鈥� that was my intention,鈥� Calato said. 鈥淏ut I swapped to computer science because I didn鈥檛 want to go to graduate school, which is ironic because I did that anyway, which I guess means I loved it. I always want to learn as much as possible.鈥�

Calato鈥檚 biggest takeaways from studying cyber at 海角社区 are the highly technical classes in malware analysis and reverse engineering as well as in software vulnerabilities and exploitation.

鈥淥ne of the best perks of 海角社区 and the Applied Cybersecurity Lab, in my opinion, is access to 海角社区 industry liaison Andrew Case. He鈥檚 one of the lead developers of Volatility, the memory forensics framework, and passes a lot of work off to us students where we鈥檙e able to contribute meaningfully to the field.鈥�

Brennen Calato, 海角社区 cybersecurity alumnus

Calato ended up doing his master鈥檚 thesis with Case and Professor Golden Richard, developing two Volatility plugins to help secure Microsoft鈥檚 web server Internet Information Services (IIS).

鈥淚IS is module-based, and what鈥檚 becoming very apparent is malicious actors are starting to upload their own modules to these web servers to create backdoors,鈥� Calato said. 鈥淭he plugins I developed help detect them.鈥�

鈥淭hat was one of the main reasons I joined the Applied Cybersecurity Lab at 海角社区,鈥� Calato continued. 鈥淲e have to constantly learn and find new things, get better, because cyber is almost like an arms race when it comes to things like defending critical infrastructure. Every time you make a move, attackers find something new. It鈥檚 an endless circle鈥攊t will never be done, and that鈥檚 why research is so important.鈥�

To learn more about cybersecurity and the SFS program at 海角社区, visit .

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