Monthly Meeting - Virtual

July 17, 2026

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

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Designing a Student Security Operation Center: One Approach to Solving the Experience Gap

This presentation details the design and implementation of the Coastline Student Security Operations Center (SOC), a pilot program, created to bridge the "experience gap" by transitioning cybersecurity students from basic analysts to SOC analysts. Coastline will share their lessons learned, the open-source tools, provide an overview of the network topology,  current lessons/incidents students use as learning opportunities, and the future roadmap for providing more students the opportunity to join the Work Experience SOC course.

Presenter

Andrea Barrios is a full-time tenured faculty member in the Computer & Cyber Sciences Department at Coastline College, where she specializes in digital forensics and cybersecurity curriculum design. She serves as the faculty advisor to the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS)  and co-advisor to the Xploit Cybersecurity student chapters. She holds various faculty committee positions and is the AI Faculty Coordinator at Coastline.  With over two decades of diverse experience spanning law enforcement, network security assessments, corporate incident response, and academia, Andrea has contributed to the NSF-funded CyberUp! Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) project, Strong Workforce Paving Equitable Pathways Technology & AI grants, and coaches the student teams for NCAE Cybergames and CIRCUS (Collegiate Incident Response Competition for Undergraduate Students).

Andrea holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, an MBA in Information Systems, and is a certified CISSP, GCFE and EnCE. A passionate advocate for experiential technical training, she worked with other Coastline faculty on creating the Student Security Operation Center to allow students to gain real-world, hands-on operational experience monitoring and defending network infrastructure.