The Farmer School of Business is pleased to announce a gift from EY which will help fund the initial five years of the school’s cybersecurity initiative.

This $400,000 gift makes it possible for the school to enhance its suite of cybersecurity offerings including the formation of a Cybersecurity Management track within the Information and Cybersecurity Management major, and the continued evolution of the Information Security minor. In addition, the gift will support faculty development and research in Cybersecurity, Cybersecurity awareness and curriculum throughout the FSB, as well as computational needs in this area.

EY partner David Meyer explained the organization’s reason for the gift, “Cybersecurity is the one of the most significant business issues we're all encountering. We've got to make sure that we're helping Miami ensure that their students have some basic knowledge about cyber. We are so proud to be partnering with the Farmer School in this regard.” 

Farmer School dean and Mitchell P. Rales Chair in Business Leadership, Jenny Darroch, noted, “The support from partners like EY is essential to the school in our efforts to provide the best undergraduate business education to our students, ensuring that they graduate beyond ready to launch their careers. We are proud that EY chooses to hire so many of our students, and believe this initiative will only strengthen that relationship.”

Skip Benamati, Chair of the Department of Information Systems and Analytics, recognized the importance of the gift.  “I am so excited about our EY partnership.  The energy to get our Cyber efforts off and running created by the EY gift is exactly what we needed.  There is a big and growing need for managerially-focused Cyber talent.  This consistent message motivated us to create this uniquely-focused program.  Having EY’s talent, resources and experience helping us to shape our efforts, will enable us to quickly produce students to begin to fill this void.”

“We see cyber as one of the critical business issues today. The challenge and importance of cyber has only heightened as we witness continued attack activity being reported as front page news. To combat this business challenge we need more students exposed to, and then selecting careers in Cyber. We are grateful to the Farmer School for teaming with EY to enable its students to avail themselves of Cyber as a career option as they approach matriculation,” added David Burg, Partner/Principal – Technology Consulting at EY.