OSHKOSH, Wis. —  John Pham plans to work in cybersecurity when he graduates from the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh.

A senior, Pham said he’s always been good around computers and wants to use his skills to keep others safe.

 “Cybersecurity is important,” he said. “ We’ve got to make sure everything is protected and everything is safe because we don’t want to give any advantage to people who would maliciously harm us or try to take advantage of our weaknesses.”

It’s a profession impacted by world events. Cyberattacks are one of the weapons employed in Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

Since the invasion and imposition of sanctions against Russia,  the specter of wider cyberattacks against other nations — like the United States —  has been looming. That’s a point of discussion in Pham’s classes this week.

Michael Patton, who heads up the university’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, said cyberattacks are now part of the battlefield.

“Nation-states are absolutely thinking about it this way. As are organized criminals,” he said. “People who are in our cybersecurity space in the defense side are always thinking about it that way. People are definitely thinking about it as a weapon.”

For years nations have been probing each other to find exploitable cyber weaknesses.

“I would like to think the general citizenry starts to think about it as a weapon more and that they may be unwitting accomplices to some of these things through simple mistakes they make in their own cyber hygiene,” Patton said.

It’s also an in-demand profession.

One estimate puts the number of open cybersecurity jobs in the nation at about half a million. That has employers, the military and other agencies and institutions look for people like Pham to help them bolster security.

“Cybersecurity is such an important field," he said. "It’s growing everyday."