Thomas College officially opened its first Security Center this week, in alignment with National Cyber Security Awareness Month. The Center will offer a range of services to the Thomas community, and eventually the outside community, to stay safe. The Center will help spread awareness and knowledge of cyber security to help students, faculty, and staff protect themselves from cyber threats. The Center also serves as a place for students to research and collaborate.
Run by students and advisor Dr. Frank Appunn, the Center has a physical space in AL-212 in the Harold Alfond Academic Center building.
Director of the Security Center, Forrest Labbe ’15, M.B.A. ’16, invites visitors to stop by to learn more. His office hours are Wednesdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“The purpose of the Security Center is to build cyber security awareness at Thomas College and to bring cyber security, IT, business, and criminal justice students together to do research, outreach to the community, and to work with small businesses, municipalities, and nonprofits,” said Labbe.
Labbe said the Center is in the beginning stage, but they have a lot planned, some of which will be announced in the coming months.
He emphasized that the Center is important because cyber security awareness is definitely a need in Maine communities.
Because of his time at Thomas as an IT Management major and now as an MBA student, Labbe has found a great interest in cyber security and hopes to someday be a security analyst working with businesses to identity and pair their business needs and technical needs to meet business goals and protect both themselves and their information.
One of the Center’s biggest and most immediate goals is to make an impact on the Thomas community with awareness and training programs around cyber security.
Labbe is thrilled to be a part of this project that has such an exciting future.
“I’m excited to start the framework of something that, in the future, every student in the cyber security, computer science, IT, and criminal justice programs will be a part of,” he said. “Having a security center is also something that is a requirement for one of our accreditations, so it’s exciting that I’m helping to build something that’s going to be a much bigger program at Thomas.”