Political Science Professor Leads way on Cybersecurity

Richard Harknett teaches all about technology and the impact of the Internet on the way we live and work, but you won’t find him tweeting or Facebooking. You won’t even find him on LinkedIn.

No, he didn’t forget his passwords. Harknett has immersed himself in cybersecurity for the last decade. With everything he knows about the field, he says the privacy vulnerabilities of using social media far outweigh any of its benefits.

Though he doesn’t have his own social media profiles, Harknett does show up on others’ feeds when he’s weighing in on political issues in the news — he’s a trusted source for media when it comes to politics and cybersecurity. 

But Harknett didn’t always specialize in cybersecurity. He began his academic career at Johns Hopkins University teaching about nuclear weapons. Then, in 1991 — the same year the Internet went public — he landed at UC, tasked with expanding the College’s International Affairs major as part of a globalization initiative. “It was a unique opportunity to make such an impact as a junior faculty member,” he said. 

Not long after his arrival, the Fulbright scholar got a call from the Pentagon. “ ‘We have this thing called a browser,’ ” Harknett remembered being told. “ ‘What are the implications for security?’ ”

Harknett dug in and conducted some policy analysis on what was then called “informational warfare.” Then he resumed his work on more traditional national security issues — until the government came calling again, in 2007. His work from the ’90s had held up, he learned. Would he be willing to update it? 

Nine years and over a billion Internet users later, Harknett remains a sought-after authority on cybersecurity both in and out of the classroom. In 2014, he even helmed the development of a cybersecurity program at UC. 

‘All hands on deck’

Through UC’s certificate program, he hopes to graduate students into a burgeoning job market. A collaboration between the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services, the cybersecurity program attracts students interested in policy as well as those who want to work at a coding level. Harknett said the multidisciplinary approach to the program is essential. 

A big part of creating the interdisciplinary certificate was to create a workforce for a growing field.

“We don’t have enough people with technical proficiency and analytical capacity to actually work on stabilizing cyberspace,” Harknett said. “There are more safety standards on my refrigerator than on the software I’m running on my laptop.” 

Harknett said that the U.S. still lacks strong cybersecurity guidelines, and there has yet to be a good conversation about what good standards might look like. But he’s working to change that. In 2012, Ohio Gov. John Kasich appointed him to the state’s Cybersecurity, Education and Economic Development Council. 

Because it is a field just as connected to ethics as it is to technological know-how, Harknett believes cybersecurity needs to be explored in multiple departments. 

“We need all hands on deck,” he says. “You need political science, criminal justice and other behavior and social sciences teaming up with IT and computer engineering to ensure a well-rounded workforce.”

As a relatively new academic field that is constantly changing, there weren’t many preexisting models for UC’s curriculum. And so UC’s program has become a pioneer in the cybersecurity realm, picking up multiple recognitions from the National Security Agency, which partnered with UC to help prevent cyber crime in 2014.

“We know what ‘cybersecurity’ means, but the curricula at different schools is all over the place,” Harknett says. “In the effort to accredit cybersecurity programs, UC is right at the table trying to shape what those standards will look like.” 

Harknett is confident that as the college further develops its cybersecurity program, UC will continue to help pave the way in securing information in the digital age.     

Cybersecurity in the classroom

In the classroom, Harknett values direct engagement as much as he does a Wi-Fi connection. 

Each semester, students in one course are plunged into acting out situations that occur in the real world. Staged dilemmas are solved by students, who are assigned specific titles. Whether it’s delivering a presidential address on cybersecurity or facing a congressional committee questioning them on policy positions, students do research for this project for months. By roleplaying as the NSA’s director or the secretary of Homeland Security, students are better able to see how real-world conflicts unfold and the decisions that must be made. 

An early adopter of online pedagogy, Harknett was using the Internet in the classroom long before Blackboard and Canopy. 

“If we’re going to study government policy, it would be easy to just lecture about it,” said the winner of the Edith C. Alexander Award for Distinguished Teaching. “But I feel it’s better if students develop and defend their own positions.” 

Harknett, who was awarded a Distinguished Service Professor award in 2009 and has collaborated with the NSA, says the biggest misconception about cybersecurity is the persisting Big Brother scenario from George Orwell’s dystopian novel "1984," in which citizens are under surveillance by a totalitarian state. 

Harknett believes that a more realistic privacy concern comes not from the government, but from the marketplace. While Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA files and the hack of Sony Pictures’ email accounts in 2014 make headlines, smaller breaches occur every day as people trade their privacy rights to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

Harknett said that the research he did all those years for the Pentagon is proving to be prescient.  

“Reality is catching up to me,” Harknett said about the research he did when he first came to UC. “I’ve been saying for the last decade that we’re going to have these vulnerabilities, that they’re going to create serious challenges for both business and government. It’s just now coming to pass.”