When SESP sophomore Kris Yun founded Safe Security a year ago, it was a one-woman show.

Coming to Northwestern, Yun said she didn’t see a space on campus dedicated to cybersecurity, despite the robust presence of clubs in the other fields of computer science. So, she said, she decided to start her own club.

Despite being a “scared freshman,” Yun said she handled all the logistics of starting a club — from getting a club advisor to getting funding from the Student Organization Finance Office — on her own.

“It was really, really hard,” Yun said. “But after our first meeting, and I remember it was a pretty packed room, I was really excited to see just how much interest there was in security because a lot of folks empathized with our mission.” 

Since then, Safe Security has become the premier cybersecurity club on campus. Dedicated to spreading awareness about cybersecurity on campus and educating students on emerging cybersecurity threats, Safe Security runs regular discussions, training seminars and technical workshops. 

This October, for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Safe Security launched a new Information Hub, which publishes articles about cybersecurity using accessible language that even non-technical students can understand.

“If I am knowledgeable, I can spread that information to others so they’re knowledgeable,” said McCormick junior and co-Director of Technology Bennett Lindberg. “It’s a strength-in-numbers sort of system.”

The Information Hub is a joint effort between McCormick Prof. Sruti Bhagavatula’s Computer Science 396, 496: Security and Privacy Education class and Safe Security’s educational and technology teams. Students in Bhagavatula’s class write the articles, and Safe Security componentizes them to ensure they are accessible for even cybersecurity beginners.

Weinberg junior and co-Director of Education Chloe Braswell led the team that revised the initial articles for the hub. She said her start with Safe Security was right after its first meeting.

“The world’s only getting bigger, when it comes to the amount of data that exists nowadays and what it means if it were compromised — that’s when cybersecurity comes in,” Braswell said.

Yun said many students are intimidated by cybersecurity as a complex and difficult subject, so Safe Security hopes to make the subject more approachable by promoting student voices in the field. She added that she firmly believes everyone, no matter how involved they are with technology, should care about cybersecurity.

“As Northwestern students, we’re all in an ecosystem that involves all of our personal information,” Yun said. “If one person gets hacked, that means that there is a vulnerability that can be exploited for every single student account.”

Email: [email protected] 

X: @jerry7hou

Related Stories:

— Turkolmez: Your privacy may be even more limited than you think

— Northwestern launches joint cybersecurity operations center with other Big Ten schools

— Students code through the night at NU’s largest hackathon WildHacks