Harvard. Yale. Brown. Stanford. One thing they all share in common: not the top school in Cyber Security. The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has now been considered for quite some time as the top school in the U.S. when it comes to educating and creating security practitioners through their cybersecurity courses and degree programs.

A Hewlett-Packard-sponsored survey reached out to more than 2,000 certified IT security professionals and in the end all concluded that UTSA’s 14 undergraduate and graduate programs in areas such as digital forensics, secure design and intrusion detection and response, were top-ranked.

Recently as well, UTSA has partnered with the National Security Agency (NSA) for years to create the talent and tools needed to address the nation’s toughest cybersecurity challenges. The NSA has even called UTSA a featured school.

The NSA’s selection is attributed to a long-standing relationship between UTSA and the NSA. One that goes back to the early 2000s and in the past year, an increased research presence with the formation of the National Security Collaboration Center.

“UTSA is unique in that it is only one of 10 colleges and universities that holds the distinction of being designated as a Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) in all of three NSA focus areas – Cyber Operations, Cyber Defense and Research,” said George C. Barnes, NSA deputy director.

NSA has established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the University of Texas (UT) System, which enables easy

collaboration between NSA and any of the 14 schools in the UT System. UTSA is working on a number of projects or “joint work statements” with NSA under the CRADA, even working on high end challenges such as augmented reality and high-speed computing.

UTSA is one piece of a giant cluster of well-connected and growing Cyber Security companies and ideas in the Alamo City. San Antonio’s infrastructure allows for a growing tech community. It has Randolph Airforce Base, one of the largest USAF installations and the large Fort Sam Houston. Fort Hood is not that far away in Killeen either (about 2.5 hours, but close in the big scheme of things). San Antonio is known as “Military City USA” for a reason.

In San Antonio, if you have a clearance and can code you pretty much have a job. At Def-Logix, we got many graduates who work for us that are UTSA alumni and even our CEO/President, Paul Rivera is a Roadrunner.

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