Sam Ganga, a partner at KPMG who serves on UMSL’s Chancellor’s Council, was the keynote speaker at last year’s STLCyberCon. (Photo courtesy of Dinesh Mirchandani)

The master’s in cybersecurity program at the University of Missouri–St. Louis enrolled its first students for the 2019-20 school year, and it hasn’t taken long for the program to rise to elite status. This week, Fortune Media released its 2025 ranking of universities with the best in-person master’s in cybersecurity, and UMSL checked in at No. 3 in the nation, up from No. 9 last year.

“It’s very exciting, a real team effort,” said Dinesh Mirchandani, chair of the Department of Information Systems and Technology. “We have come a long way, and yet we are only beginning to touch what is possible for us to accomplish. We are an extremely strong program built on a solid foundation, and when you couple that with providing students choice and flexibility in the curriculum, then you have an extremely potent combination that enables us to be very good.”

UMSL’s cybersecurity program offers two areas of emphasis: approaching cybersecurity from a management perspective – the information systems and technology emphasis – or approaching cybersecurity from the technical perspective – the computer science emphasis.

Carnegie Mellon University is No. 1 on the Fortune list, the University of Nevada–Las Vegas is No. 2, and Georgia Tech is No. 4, right behind UMSL. Other schools of note on the list include University of San Diego (No. 8) and Duke University (No. 9). The rankings included nine different data points, including graduation rate, acceptance rate, retention rate and average undergraduate GPA, among others. Here’s a full list of the data points and an explanation of the methodology.

There is an urgent need for quality cybersecurity professionals in the United States.

As Fortune noted: “There are more than 450,000 open jobs in cybersecurity in the U.S. alone, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Master’s programs in particular play an important role in addressing the talent and skills shortage.”

UMSL’s ability to meet this need head-on – especially as it relates to filling open cybersecurity jobs in the St. Louis region – is a big reason for the program’s national ranking. As with everything else with the cybersecurity program, those job results are the direct payoff from intentional preparation.

“All of our students find jobs, and our students sometimes find jobs before they graduate,” said Abde Mtibaa, assistant professor of computer science and cybersecurity program director. “We always listen to employers about what they need from students, and we always tune our program to make sure that we prepare the students for the workforce. That’s one of our main goals. They need to understand the basis of cybersecurity, but they also need to be ready, so it’s not just that they have the theory and once they graduate with their diploma in hand, they go and suddenly it is a different world. We make sure that there is no problem at all with that transition.”

As the reputation of UMSL’s cybersecurity program grows, Mtibaa says he’s seeing more and more working professionals joining the program, either as a career change or with the goal of adding a master’s degree to their resumes to boost their chances of landing a better job.

“Our program, it’s good because you can take it either part-time or full-time,” Mtibaa said. “I would say maybe 40% of the students are current employees who have their bachelor’s degree and are going toward their master’s degree while working. We are also seeing an influx of students interested in our new accelerated master’s program.”

UMSL’s cybersecurity program is shared – the information systems and technology emphasis is in the College of Business Administration, and the computer science emphasis is in the College of Arts and Sciences – differentiating it from many of its peers.

“That is one of our unique strengths,” Mirchandani said. “The emphasis in information systems and technology provides the business and management focused view of cybersecurity including analyzing cybersecurity threats and risks, complying with regulatory frameworks,, and effectively responding in the aftermath of a cybersecurity event. We provide students the understanding of how critical cybersecurity is to businesses, how to effectively manage the function, and prepare them for leadership roles such as the chief information security officer. Coupling this management knowledge with technical courses from computer science gives students tremendous flexibility and choice.”

To understand how UMSL’s program was able to so quickly gain national recognition, it’s important to understand the foundations of the program. UMSL first started offering undergraduate and graduate certificates in cybersecurity in 2014, with the idea that students could complement their primary degrees with these certificates. From the beginning, UMSL’s curriculum was based on the guidelines offered by the National Security Agency.

“When we created our undergraduate and graduate certificates in 2014, we wanted to align them with the highest standards in curriculum, and in cybersecurity those standards are provided by the National Security Agency and its partner agencies through the Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense,” Mirchandani said. “The NSA provides guidance on curriculum and knowledge units that it expects to see in programs that it designates as Centers of Academic Excellence. They also rigorously review the programs, faculty qualifications and curriculum. We wanted to map to those highest standards, so we designed our curriculum based on those requirements, and then went for the CAE designation, which we received in 2017 and renewed in 2023. Furthermore, we tapped into the insights of our industry Advisory Board which comprises of IT and cybersecurity leaders of St. Louis-based organizations. Our board members generously invest their time and talent in the success of our students and the relevancy of our curriculum.”

UMSL’s CAE designation is valid until 2028. In addition to the basic curriculum, the cybersecurity program is designed to be hands-on and interactive for students in both areas of emphasis. The Information Technology & Cybersecurity Club has been around for several years, and the Computer Science Cybersecurity Club started this semester.

“We have guest speakers that come to class who are cybersecurity thought leaders, we have students participate in competitions like the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, and we provide many other opportunities for students to continue to grow outside the class,” Mirchandani said.

One such innovative annual opportunity is UMSL’s STLCyberCon. The 2024 conference will be held on November 15– and is designed to share the expertise of UMSL’s highly ranked program with the entire community in the spirit of the university’s commitment to the land grant mission.

“It’s a half-day conference,” Mtibaa said. “We invite keynote speakers and many chief executive officers and thought leaders, mainly from the region, to speak about cybersecurity. We have a job fair as well for the students to find internships and jobs and everything. Everybody is welcome. We try to make it not too technical, to a point that a general audience can benefit from it as well. It’s an excellent networking conference, and it’s good for outreach for the programs and for UMSL.”