About Our Student Editors

Each chapter lists the students who contributed to that lab, but I would like to bring recognition to the student editors specifically.  We started

Jake Christensen (2023-Present) – Jake is new to cybersecurity.  He spent 2 years as an aerospace engineering major before making the change.  Jake used his college experience to contribute to this textbook’s overall pace by sharing his fellow students’ observations as they learned these complex materials.  He also spent many evenings in the cyber lab ensuring all of the labs worked in a teaching environment, not just on student personal PCs.  Jake also became our self-taught subject matter expert in developing the Linux labs.

Dante Rocca (2023-Present) – Dante became a surprise editor.  Once I gave them access to the textbook, they completed the first 16 chapters over a weekend!  Dante is amazing and right now they pull double duty as the cleanup editor and the copy editor for Part II.  They kept the rest of us on track and caught what we missed.  They polished the formatting of the labs and led our efforts to make sure the printed version of this ebook looked sharp. They also volunteered for the herculean effort of completing the 2,800-item checklist for publishing.

Julian Romano (2023-Present) – Julian is our jack of all trades.  Not only has he tested most of the labs in this book, but Julian uses his experience as a lead help desk technician to ensure the instructions are clear and easy to follow.  Julian presented this effort to various industry and educational groups.  He became the slide and poster master and easily answered expert and layman questions about this book.  Furthermore, he is busy writing undergraduate grants so our students can focus on cyber-related activities instead of working other jobs.

Raechel Ferguson (2023-Present) – Raechel first approached me with an idea.  She wanted to learn Windows Server and she felt that having an objective of developing labs would help her do that.  Raechel’s many extracurricular activities limit her time availability to this effort, but her Windows labs have proven invaluable.  She will continue to develop more as she has time.  Raechel partners with Julian in presenting our textbook writing effort and assists in preparing the grant.

Kyle Wheaton (2024) – He dominated in his enthusiasm for this project.  He became involved when I used this book in class and he had so many great ideas. We brought him on board to turn those ideas into reality.  His contributions resulted in making good learning activities into ones that are fun and exciting. A couple of labs would not exist past the idea stage without Kyle putting in the effort.

Justin La Zare (2024) – Is our resident Capture the Flag Expert.  He has traveled the world to provide aeronautical-based CTF events to industry and academia.  He had a break from his busy schedule and volunteered his time and expertise to develop Part IV of this book.  He turned brainstormed ideas into tangible learning activities.

Sincerely,

Dr. HVH