Fayetteville Today

A new breed of warrior is at the fore when it comes to technology. These warriors are cyber security pros, and Fayetteville Technical Community College is training its students to protect others from cyber attacks.

The war in Ukraine is a conventional fight, but it has highlighted a more urgent need for information technology specialists to brace themselves to protect America against future hacks and cyber attacks from Russia. The FBI issued a warning recently for soldiers to be aware that the likelihood of such attacks is in the air, ABC 11 reported.

Protecting the country’s infrastructure is more vital than ever, as we’ve seen from past hacking attacks that have disrupted services and supply chains.

That puts IT students at Fayetteville Tech in a vital security role.

“It does kind of feel like you're on the front line, but in a digital sense,” Christopher Barksdale, a retired Army soldier and aircraft mechanic, told ABC 11. “You hear about digital attacks here and digital attacks there, and it's almost like you're getting involved in a major conflict going on again.”

The way to combat it on the technical front is to train today’s students to develop software that is less likely to be disrupted by hackers half a world away, ABC 11 said.

“The same technology that they use to operate your car is the same technology that they are going to use to try and break into your computer at home,” Fayetteville Tech instructor Darryl Carter said to ABC 11. “So we have to [get] them scripting and we have to teach them software development and teach how programs are written and how to do that safely and effectively.”