MHCC students recognized for next generation firewall training

Students in MHCC’s Cyber Security and Networking program have been accredited by Palo Alto Networks for finishing a class on next generation firewalls – marking a first for the U.S., the program’s leader said.

“This is an accreditation that shows that our students know how to install and implement a next generation firewall,” sai

d Wayne Machuca, program head and instructor for the class last fall.

The recognition from Palo Alto Networks came on Feb. 18.

Mt. Hood’s link to the firm owes to a connection with Jens Mache, an instructor at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College hoping to create a course at that campus. Mache would invite Mt. Hood to join the process.

“He was the bridge that brought this together,” said Machuca.

He said the partnership is part of broader collaboration Mt. Hood is doing “with colleges like Lewis and Clark… across the West Coast, and even in other parts of the country” to build the Cyber Security and Networking program, now in its second year of existence.

The first cohort of Mt. Hood students will graduate in the spring.

Palo Alto let Machuca know it was committed to create its own Palo Alto Networks Academy, he said. “They asked us if we’d be willing to participate. As it turns out, we are the first community college in the United States to have a class get through the (Academy). And, as an acknowledgement, the students in the c

lass were able to take an accreditation test and a lot of them passed.

Machuca explained what a new firewall can provide: “an easier method in not only determining what kind of traffic is coming through your network, but it can also take types of traffic and split it up.”

Paul Morris, an instructor in the MHCC networking program who will teach the class in the spring said the key point is looking beyond standard firewall features. “We deal with ports, and that’s a very important thing,” he said.

Morris offered an example of the improved protections.

“Let’s say that here on campus, we wanted to allow people to use Facebook, but we don’t want them to use a particular part of Facebook, like (instant messaging),” he said. The firewall can differentiate between features because “each one of those has a different, what’s called (a) signature.”

Palo Alto Networks donated about twelve firewalls so that students could get hands-on experience. Students were “able to see how to set up, implement, install, use, (and) monitor everything (about) these firewalls,” Machuca said. The course recognized focused on beginning installation and implementation of

a next generation firewall,” he said.

Morris’ students will be using virtual machines, or VMs, to learn about the mechanics of the firewalls. That’s a good thing: the VMs provide “a virtual environment which allows us to manipulate the environment, however we want to, without affecting the school’s infrastructure or anything like that,” he said.

In contrast, Machuca’s fall class was limited because students had to take care with Mt. Hood’s network.