Northern Michigan Cyber Defense Students Gain Experience Working with the Military During Northern Strike Collaboration

Northern Michigan University becomes the first high education institution to collaborate with the Department of Defense’s Northern Strike exercise. Northern Michigan University recently announced eight information assurance/cyber defense students earned an opportunity to work alongside military cybersecurity teams from the United States and NATO ally Latvia earlier this month. The students’ mission in the training was to regain control of a network used for communications and war command that was compromised by a foreign adversary, figure out how the network was infiltrated, and remedy the vulnerability. NMU’s collaboration with Northern Strike was sparked after Representative Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA officer, toured the university’s Upper Peninsula Cybersecurity Institute. University leadership then met with the representative to work out the details of the collaboration. Over two days students worked with US and NATO teams allowing students to gain experience and opportunities within cybersecurity in a critical scenario. Those interested in learning more about the Northern Strike training collaboration between Northern Michigan University and the Department of Defense can find more details here.