TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — What used to be a handful of overly optimistic animation reels of hackers in dark rooms has now become hard reality: every business, every school, nearly every household in Arizona depends on functioning systems — and those systems must be defended.
At the heart of that defense lies a growing corps of student-interns from Pima Community College who are working hand-in-glove with the state’s cybersecurity ops center.
Governor Katie Hobbs acknowledged the college's effort Thursday morning. “Through this program, the Department of Homeland Security is hiring interns and placing them with the Regional Security Operations Center,” she said.
One of those interns, Christopher Shaw, saw his career path pivot toward cyber defense recently. “This means everything to me, this is my career change here, and I want to help protect the country, the world, everybody,” Shaw said.
The program is based out of Pima Community College’s East Campus. There students enter the school’s “cyber warfare range” and operations center environment — training that not only teaches system defense but also offensive thinking.
As Dean Jim Craig of Business, Information Technology and Hospitality at the college put it, “with the cyber warfare range that actually teaches students how to hack and how to think like the enemy, and therefore how to protect the country better as a result.”
The stakes are real, Craig added. “These students that started here were producing real work and generating real intelligence of starting on the job,” he said.
In fact, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Homeland Security confirmed that interns in the program are actively working to prevent attacks every day.
The state’s cybersecurity body, known as the Cyber Command within the Department of Homeland Security, operates the state-wide Security Operations Center, the primary hub for monitoring and responding to cyber threats across Arizona.
That center’s mission — to “prevent, detect, analyze and respond to cybersecurity incidents” — underpins why student-intern contributions matter.
For students like Shaw, the learning is immediate, practical and historic.
For the state, it’s a timely investment: hackers and hostile actors now operate globally and relentlessly. By tapping local talent and training them in real-time threat environments, the initiative not only builds a workforce pipeline but strengthens the cyber shield for all Arizonans.
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Eddie Celaya is a multimedia journalist at KGUN 9. Born in Tucson and raised in the Phoenix area, Eddie is a life-long Arizonan and graduate of the University of Arizona who loves the desert and mountains and hates the cold. Previously, Eddie worked in print media at the Arizona Daily Star. Share your story ideas with Eddie at edward.celaya@kgun9.com, or by connecting on Facebook or Instagram.
