A Deep Dive with Andrew Hurd, Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Cybersecurity

Andrew James Hurd has been an assistant professor in the information technology (IT) and cybersecurity graduate programs at Empire State University since 2021. Hurd aims to be a support figure for anyone who needs it and to empower learners to take initiative in their pursuit of knowledge. For Cybersecurity Month, he discusses his trajectory in the field and shares insights on engaging with one’s passions, education, and internet safety.

Framed by a Microsoft Teams background of rolling hills at dusk with hints of snowy peaks in the distance, his glasses catch glints of the computer screen’s light.

Irigoyen: Can you tell me about your upbringing? What were some early interests and passions?

Hurd: I’ve learned so much from my siblings, what to do and what not to do. Going to Camden High School, every teacher I had would say “Which Hurd are you?” I am very passionate about my family. I have a wife and two kids that are both very successful. I couldn’t be prouder as a father.

One of my early passions and interests is playing “Dungeons & Dragons.” I’ve played since 1980.  I have a large group of friends that I have played with over the years, and those are some of my closest friends because we’ve spent so many hours together. When we get together 20 years later at a wedding, we sit around, joke, and laugh because we all remember the stories. It’s led me into a passion of board games—all my family are really into board games … our collections are extremely large. I think our board game collection downstairs has over 300 games in it.

Besides that, I’m a sports fanatic—a Mets fan and a Miami Dolphins fan, so I’ve had a lot of misery over the years. My other major passion is giving back to my community. I was a Scoutmaster for close to 18 years and now I joined the Lions Club in Ballston Spa. I do a lot of community service work.

Irigoyen: I can see how your current role pulls from all those elements in some way or other.

Hurd: Yeah. The biggest thing with board games is problem-solving skills. At a very young age, I learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. When I went to school in third grade and everyone got one for Christmas … I was the kid in class that would solve them. It’s just a pattern. If you’re not into problem-solving, you probably don’t get into IT.

Irigoyen: Can I throw in a bonus question and ask what your favorite board game is?

Hurd: My two favorite games right now are “Zombicide”—all versions of it—and a game called “Too Many Bones” by Chip Theory. “Dungeons & Dragons” is still my first favorite.

Irigoyen: There’s something to be said about the strategy and the problem-solving skills that you need to have to navigate the worlds of those games.

Hurd: Not only navigate those games, but life itself. I find that in high-pressure areas, I’m cool and calm because I can come up with a plan to survive it and get through it successfully. That’s really helped me in my career.

Irigoyen: Have you always been tech-oriented?

Hurd: When I decided to go to college, I had three trajectories. One of them was computer science, one was culinary arts, and another was to be an airline steward because I love to travel, I love to cook, and I found computers fascinating at the time.

I grew up in a poor household … I used to play a lot of early computer games. My brothers and I would do a lot of things with a computer that we saved up all our extra change and purchased—and Santa brought some parts of it—and I really enjoyed the idea of creating things on a computer. That was one of the things that drew me into the IT field when I went to college.

I remember being in a computer lab the day the internet went live. When I went into the industry, I wanted to build things that millions of people would use—I didn’t want to do computer games, I wanted to do software.

I got my two bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and computer science, stayed in school and got my Master of Teaching in mathematics. My best friend and I had the thought that we would go back to our high school—he’d be the math teacher, I’d be the computer science teacher—and when we got down to graduation I said, ‘I can’t teach from just book knowledge, I really need some experience to teach.’ So, I decided to go into the industry for a while.

Achieving the title of software engineer was a big deal for me back then, it showed a level of dedication … it was a sign of prestige and hard work. I was part of the team that made the Palm Pilot 3.01, which is now the backbone for all smartphones—it’s the first touch screen, and I was part of the team that wrote that software. I see someone grab their iPad and stylus and start writing, and I just smile because … that technology goes all the way back to that team I worked on.

I lift up the stylus and tablet I was taking interview notes with, and Hurd gestures towards the screen, saying, “There you go!”

Hurd: In the 1990s, we wrote the first online grocery store out in Boston, called Tolume—I was the team lead for that. We wanted a menu that swooshed out—things that just didn’t exist in the world of Windows. And we wrote it, we made things that dynamically slid out, which was unheard of back then. No one heard about anything like this until COVID, when stores put groceries in your vehicle for you. I did that back in ’96, ’97.

Irigoyen: Those are historic technological milestones. You see the world we live in today and wonder, when did it all start? To know that you were there for some of those things is very cool.

Hurd: One of the other funny things is when my daughter was really young and I was in the process of writing one of my first lab manuals that I published. She asked, ‘Dad, what do you do?’ I say, ‘I work with computers, Abby.’ She goes, ‘Can you hack computers?’ I said, ‘Just know that your father has some unique skills, and yes, I can do some phenomenal things with computers. But I never do anything bad.’

Irigoyen: To know how to defend, you must know how to attack and what those entry points might be, right?

Hurd: That’s why I like writing lab and hacking manuals. There are things that students have to learn so that they can know how to defend. I use this phrase all the time: “with great power comes great responsibility.” If I’m teaching them how to write a virus so that they can learn how to combat a virus, they shouldn’t go around and release the virus that they wrote.

When you go into cybersecurity, the biggest issue is that hackers aren’t constrained. They have all the tools available to them, and most of them are free. The people trying to defend it—network administrators, cybersecurity specialists—are constrained by processes, doing it the right way, so they document everything they do. If you’ve got hackers doing things at light speed, and you’re doing things at a snail’s pace, who’s going to win?

Irigoyen: It’s hard to beat the immediacy of a hack.

He explains the purpose of a course he teaches called “Ethical Hacking.”

Hurd: The concept is that students learn what they call the attack vectors—how people would first try to get into a company.

Irigoyen: You’ve talked a bit about your trajectory so far, can you tell me more?

Hurd: I went to a community college, then ended up going to SUNY Potsdam and graduated with a master’s degree. I went into the industry, worked for the federal government, wrote some radar software that is still on bomber aircrafts today, I’m excited to say.

I took a job with Seneca Foods in Rochester, and they never had a software engineer, they didn’t know what a software engineer could do. When I interviewed, I asked, ‘what work do you have for a software engineer?’ They pulled out a list. I looked at it and thought, ‘Wow. It’s going to keep me busy for years.’

Hurd comments that he was eventually let go due to budget restructuring. He was given much positive feedback on his work, which he completed in a six-month period—half the time that was initially projected.

Hurd: I went home, and my wife was freaking out … I told her we were going to have a picnic, so we went out to Niagara Falls that day and I said, ‘Maybe this is the time I look for a teaching job.’ I had seven or eight years of experience in the industry … so, that Sunday night I wrote up cover letters and revised my resume.

On Monday Morning, ITT Technical Institute called me, they’re like, ‘can you be here tomorrow?’ It wasn’t even a job interview, they said: ‘we have four classes that start in two weeks.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute. I didn’t say yes … give me a couple days.’

As I was walking out of the interview, Hudson Valley Community College called me for an interview for the next day. That’s the trajectory of my teaching … I was at Hudson Valley for 15 years and finished my doctorate. Education is something that can’t be taken away from you. I won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012, which is one of the highest honors you can win as a professor.

He describes hearing about SUNY Empire’s job opening and applying.

Hurd: Long story short, in 2021 I got hired. I proposed the Master of Science in IT program while interviewing … and it’s been one of the fastest-growing degrees at the university.

Irigoyen: It’s rare that someone has so many moments in their career where they see they’re making a tangible impact. I can imagine that’s a very fulfilling thing.

Hurd: It is. I love getting emails from former students that give me an update on what they’re doing in their career because I know I’ve had a hand in that. I got an email from a student who wrote the controllers for the Mars Rover’s tires. He said, ‘I started in your programming class. I would never have been able to do any of this without your tutoring and leadership getting me through my degree.

I had another student email me saying he wrote the pressure control drivers for the San Francisco geothermal tunnel. Another said he wrote the mobile network communications for military flak jackets, so when they go out into the field, each of the flak jackets becomes a wireless node for network communication.

Irigoyen: Can you share what the most challenging thing about your work has been?

Hurd: Communication … making sure everybody’s on the same page. Now, with everything dealing with artificial intelligence, I hear tons of my colleagues say, ‘I don’t know if this paper is written by AI.’ I say, ‘Have a conversation … I told you that if you were going to use AI, you had to cite it in the paper. It looks like you’ve extended that a bit. Why don’t you give me another attempt at this? Why don’t you try it without the use of AI?’

What I’ve been mentoring faculty on is trying to get students to buy into their education. If I give you a valid reason why you shouldn’t be using AI, that there’s some technique or deep-down learning I need you to understand so that when you go into the field … you can be successful, I need you to buy into that.

Irigoyen: What led you to Empire State University?

Hurd: There’s a big difference working with professionals, working adults, and working with freshmen. It was enticing for me to think that I would be able to work the majority of the time with working adults.

Irigoyen: What is your proudest accomplishment?

Hurd: There are a lot of ways I could take this question. I’m proud to be a father of two successful adults. I’m proud to be a husband of 29 years. I’m proud to be the first member of a family of 160 grandkids to get their master’s and doctorate. I’ve been extremely proud to take one generation removed from poverty to upper-middle class.

I’m a cancer survivor. I’ve bowled a perfect game … but I guess my proudest accomplishment is to be that person in my friend group, in my community, that people look for if someone needs guidance, words of advice … being a good member of my community and family.

Irigoyen: What advice do you have for those who are interested in this field?

Hurd: If there’s something that interests you in IT or cybersecurity, there is so much to do here—and you can come from anywhere … you don’t have to be a techie, because we need people to do project management, we need people to be writing policies.

Irigoyen: In our technologically connected world, what is your best advice to stay safe on the internet?

Hurd: Awareness. Understand what’s happening around you. Microsoft will never call you and ask you for your password. Your bank’s never going to call you and ask for your account information. They have that. They know that.

One of the things I do is give talks at the Lion’s Club—I gave a talk at the Malta Senior Center about AI and cybersecurity on how to protect that generation.

Irigoyen: What’s something you wish more people knew?

Hurd: The ‘you don’t know what you don’t know philosophy’ that drives people to ask more questions and have the fortitude to follow up on them. So, if someone gives you an abrupt answer, that you have the fortitude to say: ‘I really don’t understand what you’re saying, can you please explain that?’ There are lots of things I could go on about, but I wish for people to have the fortitude to ask questions and gain the knowledge they wish they had.

Cybersecurity didn’t exist when I got into IT. When criminals started hacking, people didn’t know how to defend themselves, so everybody was very easy to hack. If people become educated, it gives us a bigger defense.