College of Engineering alumnus Ahmad Najee-Ullah has always been interested in computers, but experiencing the effects of a cyber breach firsthand is what pushed him towards the cybersecurity field.
“In 2014, there was a major cyber attack on Microsoft and Sony,” Ahmad said. “It took down their gaming networks at the height of the Christmas season of that year, and I couldn’t play my games. I wanted to learn how they did the attack, what it was, and how they can be prevented – how do these major companies like Microsoft and Sony become victims of something like that? So that was kind of the launching point and from there I just got more and more interested.”
Ahmad knew he wanted to stay in Colorado for college and had plenty of choices, but felt UCCS stood out from the others.
“I considered CU Boulder, School of Mines, Colorado State University, Colorado Mesa and was accepted to all those schools,” said Ahmad. “But when I went and toured UCCS, I just felt like there was something unique, especially with the Bachelor of Innovation. There was no other school in the country, and definitely no other school in Colorado, that had an innovation degree program. And UCCS seemed like it had a good mixture of academics and the college experience.”
It proved to be a good decision for the Computer Science and Cybersecurity grad, as UCCS provided those opportunities to Ahmad through programs like the CyberCorps: Scholarship For Service (SFS), as the only school in Colorado that participates. The SFS program grants scholarships covering up to three years of funding to cybersecurity students through the National Science Foundation with the agreement that recipients will work in a cybersecurity-related role for the federal government upon graduation, equivalent to the number of years the scholarship covered.
“SFS paid for my junior and senior year, so I worked for the federal government for two years and just finished that commitment,” he said. “It’s a big research scholarship, and most scholars who get in that program do a research project and either write papers or present their research in front of conferences. I was able to do that too, so I have a paper published, “Towards Detection of AI-Generated Texts and Misinformation,” and that was my research project, basically taking what became ChatGPT and trying differentiate between human and AI-written language and detecting when AI has been used.”
Ahmad noted the valuable opportunities, resources and hands-on experience that SFS offers, but that students need to put in initiative and efforts to make the most of them.
“The SFS program helps you connect to federal employers, but they don’t set the job up for you,” Ahmad emphasized. “They’ll take you to career fairs, they’ll connect you to recruiters, but it’s ultimately on you to secure the job. I fulfilled my commitment at the Bureau of Reclamation, a bureau under the Department of Interior that basically manages water for the entire Western United States. So the management of dams, hydroelectric power, water delivery, and water security.”
Though Ahmad’s commitment to his SFS work concluded last summer after his two years in the Bureau of Reclamation, he chose to stay with the bureau as part of the Risk Management Framework team.
“When I first joined Reclamation, I was in the Security Operations Center as an incident responder, where I did more active investigation of security events and working to remediate them,” he explained. “After about a year and a half of that, I was given an opportunity to do a rotation with the Risk Management Framework team in Reclamation that handles enterprise cybersecurity compliance. I started that last January, and it was supposed to be temporary until October, but a permanent position opened and I applied and got it. Essentially, we do security audits and provide governance and compliance for different security frameworks from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”
With his current role, Ahmad has a flexibility he enjoys and undertakes a combination of technical tasks, compliance tasks and collaborating with IT stakeholders while contributing to an organization that is committed to making an impact, an important factor for him. He balances several responsibilities in his day-to-day work, including acting as an Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and supporting the Enterprise Cybersecurity Compliance program on top of his primary role.
“My main role is as a plan of action and milestone coordinator,” said Ahmad. “Basically, when there is a weakness found in a system, there’s supposed to be a plan to remediate that weakness within a certain amount of time, so I coordinate the activities for remediating those weaknesses and help get the evidence of completion together.”
“Part of why I applied to Reclamation was that I’m interested in companies and organizations that make a positive impact,” he added. “I have the ability to touch on a lot of different topics within my role and I like the ability to make guidance, because it’s one of the biggest impacts on how an organization operates.”
Ahmad attributes his time at school as part of what’s helped him prepare for his work and the leadership aspects of it, especially the Bachelor of Innovation (BI) program.
“I was president of the National Society of Leadership and Success, and that helped me get out of my comfort zone because I’ve never really been comfortable speaking in front of people and taking on leadership roles,” said Ahmad. “And the BI program really prepared me for what I do. Dr. Boult, Dr. Lewis, Dr. Stiles and the rest of the BI faculty stressed how innovation and impact intersect and how to make a lasting impact on everything that you do, and how having interdisciplinary communication between different fields is important.”
Along with his AI research, Ahmad’s hands-on experience at UCCS saw him working with Colorado Springs-based companies to improve their products and systems, such as ConcealFab, which focuses on making network antennas less visible. He partnered with a local cleaning company to expand and build their brand, worked with another local client who was developing an e-commerce platform and also worked with the Cyber Resilience Institute to develop their web presence and set up courses on security measures.
For now, Ahmad is enjoying working at an impactful organization and continuing to learn about creating effective cybersecurity guidance but is interested in moving to policy and further exploring AI as his career grows.
“I know I want to continue in the cybersecurity policy area,” he said. “There are many different roles that I can go into for that, and I want to go into the auditing side as well, as that helps you learn policy. Ultimately, I would like to be in a position where I lead a policy team. I’ve also been trying to specialize in AI because it’s going to be a really big industry in the future.”
Ahmad highlighted how using college resources to make connections and get real-world experience can set a graduate apart.
“UCCS in particular offers a lot of opportunities to get involved in the community and learn how to do things interdisciplinarily and work with people from different backgrounds,” said Ahmad. “If you take advantage of what college offers you, you can leave college with the degree and the experience and go into the job market as a much more competitive candidate.”
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