Colleges and universities are helping US military veterans gear up for a new mission: fighting cyber criminals

Mason Bestine left his small hometown of Clymer, New York, straight out of high school to join the Marine Corps, looking for adventure.

For four years, he served as an avionics technician at Fort Dix in New Jersey, fixing attack helicopters. It was with the Marines that he traveled abroad for the first time - to the Czech Republic for a NATO air show and to Brazil for a joint training exercise.

"It was definitely eye-opening," Bestine says. "It kind of taught me that you can really do whatever you set your mind to."

What he would set his mind to next, however, was a mystery - including to himself.

Going home was "not in my cards," he says. He worked briefly as an air compression technician in Philadelphia but tired of spending long days "in the bottom of factories." Then a series of serendipitous events set him on a path to a hot new vocation: cybersecurity.

Today, Bestine, 24, is studying for a degree in information systems technology with a minor in cybersecurity at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He has an internship with the university's Office of Information Security and hopes it will help land him a job when he graduates.

Service and mission

About 200,000 service members leave the military each year, according to the government. They go on to a wide variety of work in civilian life, from finance to health care to teaching to law enforcement, or to college on the GI Bill.

Some universities and government agencies are now helping steer veterans to the burgeoning field of cybersecurity, where there is a growing labor shortage. Employers posted more than 514,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. in the year ending June 2025, up 12 percent year-on-year, according to CyberSeek.

Advocates say veterans are particularly suited for this work as the military equips them with technical, project management and leadership skills that transfer well to industry. Some have a background in intelligence gathering, including the security clearances valued by employers.

"Just being in the military, you have that mission focus…the service component, and then there are the technical skills that come along," says Ernie Ferraresso, senior director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, or Cyber Florida, which is tasked with training a cybersecurity workforce for the state. Ferraresso is himself a retired U.S. Marine intelligence officer.

Cyber Florida, which is housed at the University of South Florida, is part of the CyberSkills2Work consortium of 11 educational institutions that trains veterans and other first responders for cybersecurity careers, including earning a certification. Funded by the National Security Agency and others, the CyberSkills2Work consortium has trained 3,500 professionals, of which about half are veterans.

"It's not very easy to break into the cybersecurity field," says Mai Ensmann, who runs the program under Cyber Florida. The program helps veterans earn a cybersecurity certification, sends them to conferences, helps burnish resumes and connects them with potential employers.

Amber Waters, 34, credits the program for helping her land a job after seven years serving in the National Guard, where she fixed computers and delivered aid during disasters such as hurricanes and the Covid-19 pandemic.

After a medical discharge from the military in 2022, she went through a few starts and stops - "life happens" - before completing a bachelor's degree at the University of South Florida in health sciences and health information technology.

Cyber Florida's three-month course, completed online, along with her own dogged networking, helped her bridge the gap and get hired as a cybersecurity analyst with Home Depot.

"I love it," she says. "Every day I'm challenged and encouraged."

Smoothing the transition

The transition to civilian life, with its lack of structure and abundance of choices, can be tough, including for veterans entering college, where their peers are often several years younger.

In the military, "you're told what to do, where to do it, how to do it, what to wear when you're doing it. You move up the ranks and you're in charge of people," says Mike Brown, a veteran and director of the Prince Family Veterans Resource Center at Villanova University.

"It's like, 10 weeks ago, you were leading a combat deployment in Afghanistan," he says. "Now you're sitting in a class with 18-year-olds writing a paper on whatever the case may be."

When Bestine, the former Marine, was trying to quit his job fixing industrial air compressors, he asked his girlfriend, who was from the Philadelphia area, about local colleges. She mentioned Villanova. Bestine called the university and was connected to Brown, who within days gave him a tour of the campus.

Bestine enrolled two weeks later in January 2024. The university's veterans center, he says, became his oasis and his community. People drop by every day to hang out and eat lunch.

Villanova has 180 military-connected students out of a student population of 10,000. They include those on active duty, veterans and dependents of veterans. Brown also connected Bestine to the university's Office of Information Security, which hired Bestine as one of three interns.

Universities have started hiring students to supplement their small IT teams in the face of rising cyberattacks. These range from ransomware - where cybercriminals hold data hostage and demand payment - to phishing, where they try to steal passwords to access accounts, says Leo Nelson, Villanova's chief information security officer.

Veterans, Nelson says, frequently demonstrate "discipline, integrity and a work ethic that you cannot just teach."

Bestine works one-and-a-half days a week with the information security team, performing work such as scanning for vulnerabilities in web applications and websites in the system, then alerting the team to fix them. "I would like to work in the cybersecurity field as soon as I graduate," possibly in government, Bestine says. After a year or two, he says, he might try to get an MBA. That's the plan, at least.