Academic Partners FAQ

Programs

Curriculum Standards and Requirements

What are the curriculum standards and requirements?

PISCES ensures the operation and capacity to support faculty and student access to live monitoring data, both at the monitoring stack and through customer premise equipment.

Do I need certain prerequisites?

Students should check with their academic institution regarding specific prerequisites. The PISCES program requires students to have:

Basic computer and programming (scripting) skills
Good knowledge of the fundamentals of IP networking
Access to a computer (personal or university-provided, depending on security policies)

Is there specific hardware or software required?

Computers and reliable internet are required.
Additional resources are encouraged but not mandatory.
Students must meet their home institution’s software requirements (e.g., programming platforms).
PISCES works with institutions to ensure students have access to any required software

Online Learning

Is there a way for this class to be taken as part of an online program?

Not at this time, however PISCES is exploring opportunities to transition courses to colleges in states where PISCES does not have a state-level agreement using “canned” data. Readiness measures would include:

Signed waivers by participants
An ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack for mounting the data
Firewall protections
Secure, private working environments
Basic cybersecurity knowledge (e.g., protecting against hacking, viruses)

How do the PISCES courses fit into existing cybersecurity programs?

PISCES may be taught as standalone classes (Analyst Operations, SOC Operations, Operational Technology Monitoring), as a “capstone” or senior project, or as part of an existing class.

Participation and Enrollment

How do I get involved?

Students must be enrolled in a participating university offering the PISCES program.
Students must meet prerequisites set by both PISCES and their university.
The program is not typically for new students, but exceptions can be made for qualified individuals.