CAE designation

NSA badge

The National Security Agency (NSA) has designated Sam Houston State University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education (CAE-CD) through the academic year 2025 for the B.S. Degree in Computer Science, concentration in Information Assurance (IA).

The National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) program is managed by NSA's National Cryptologic School. Federal partners include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)/National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education (NICE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense Office of the Chief Information Officer (DoD-CIO), and U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM).

Program-Level Learning Outcomes:

  1. Use cyber defense technologies and exploitation tools to identify and solve cybersecurity issues in software.
  2. Understand information security policies and identify ethical issues related to cyberspace.
  3. Develop teamwork skills and communicate effectively with others to solve challenging problems.
  4. Optimize the effectiveness of cybersecurity tools by performing threat mitigation, digital forensic analysis, and software vulnerability assessment.
  5. Develop special knowledge in hardware design and software development.