Louisiana Tech University (LA Tech) is establishing a new student-run security operations center (SOC) to strengthen its security posture, expand its cybersecurity talent pipeline, and attract high-achieving students to campus.
To build the new SOC, LA Tech is partnering with cybersecurity and IT solutions provider TekStream, which will deploy a production-grade environment powered by Splunk. Through the partnership, TekStream will guide SOC operations while LA Tech students perform monitored threat hunting, log analysis, incident response, and risk reporting.
The program maps activities to frameworks from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education and aligns alert complexity to student skill levels to support both a safe learning curve and cost-containment for the university.
“The job market for new graduates is increasingly competitive, despite the need for new cybersecurity talent,” said LA Tech Chief Information Officer (CIO) Thomas Hoover, in a statement. “We’re excited to give our students the competitive advantage they need to successfully launch their careers after graduation. At the same time, our partnership with TekStream and Splunk allows us an opportunity to create a long-term, affordable solution for shoring up our cyber defenses.”
LA Tech’s CIO and the College of Engineering and Science pursued this model to rapidly improve the university’s security posture without the long lead time of developing an in-house program from scratch. TekStream describes the approach as offering “neighborhood watch–style security” while helping LA Tech attract students interested in cybersecurity careers.
Within six months of launch, about 20 students are expected to be working in the SOC, TekStream said.
The first student cohort will begin training and managing SOC activities during the fall semester. Students will progress through a tiered operations model aligned with experience, and TekStream says graduates can leave with more than two years of applied cybersecurity experience documented on their transcripts.
The program is supported by TekStream’s Workforce Academy, which provides structured curricula and practitioner oversight.
LA Tech’s deployment expands on similar student-operated SOC partnerships at institutions including Louisiana State University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, TekStream noted.
