Fairfield University Cybersecurity Program Achieves Prestigious National Recognition

At a glance

• National designation: Fairfield University’s School of Engineering and Computing has been named a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense by the National Security Agency (NSA). The program has long been run with partners including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
• Graduate focus: The designation formally validates the university’s Master in Cybersecurity program.
• Labs: Students train in a Cybersecurity Lab and a Security Operations Center.
• Faculty: Faculty research and industry-relevant teaching were cited as reasons for the award.
• Wider trend: Washington wants more schools training security talent.

What Fairfield earned

Fairfield University in Connecticut announced in March 2025 that its School of Engineering and Computing had been designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) by the NSA. The designation runs through 2030 and came after a three-year application process.

The CAE-CD program recognizes schools that help protect the nation’s information infrastructure through cybersecurity education and research. “There are two important milestones in this recognition,” said Associate Dean Mirco Speretta, director of the Cybersecurity program: formal validation of the Master in Cybersecurity, and recognition of the university’s cybersecurity infrastructure.

The graduate program

The designation recognizes Fairfield’s graduate cybersecurity curriculum, which mixes theory with practical work. Students learn technical skills along with the judgment needed to handle real incidents.

Ethics and communication are part of the coursework too. Security professionals make judgment calls every day, and they have to explain those calls to people who are not technical.

Lab and SOC training

Fairfield’s Cybersecurity Center includes a Cybersecurity Lab and a Security Operations Center (SOC). Students use them for simulations and case studies based on real incidents.

Industry partnerships give students access to current tools and to internships and co-op placements. Those connections often lead to first jobs.

Faculty and research

The program’s faculty bring research and professional experience into the classroom, and university leaders credited them with much of the work behind the designation. Speretta also thanked Dr. Akshay Mathur and the university’s IT services team.

Fairfield has also invested in the lab space and equipment students need for hands-on work.

Why the designation matters nationally

The CAE-CD label matters beyond Fairfield. The federal government wants more domestic security talent, and the program is one way it steers students toward schools that meet a national standard.

Fairfield ties the designation to the National Cybersecurity Strategy released in March 2023, which calls for a stronger domestic talent pipeline. It also adds to Connecticut’s growing list of schools focused on security education.

What it means for students

For prospective students, the designation is a useful filter. It means an outside federal review found the program meets a defined standard.

Applicants comparing programs should ask how much time students spend in the lab and SOC, and which employers take interns.

They can also check the NSA’s list of designated schools, which shows when each designation expires. Fairfield’s runs through 2030.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.