SDSU graduate students help small business fine-tune network security

In response to new cybersecurity requirements from the Department of Defense (DoD), two San Diego State University graduate students are playing a critical role in helping one local company stay in the game.

Through their work in the San Diego Cybersecurity Clinic, Christopher Leong and Avi Martin are assisting MDF Technologies, a Carlsbad-based firm that sells aircraft and naval parts to the federal government. 

MDF has long been a partner to the DoD, but contract work now requires compliance with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) to protect sensitive information.

Cybersecurity clinics at higher education institutions provide free digital security services to under-resourced organizations, similar to how law or medical schools offer free community clinics.

“It’s just like a security audit,” Leong said. “We can make recommendations on what they can put in place to better meet those standards.”

MDF, which employs just six people, will eventually seek accreditation that they meet the new CMMC standards. Connie Dallery, MDF’s quality assurance manager, initially began the project on her own but soon realized additional support would make a significant difference.

“We know we have this system, and many parts of it are secure, but I didn’t actually realize that we needed to write policy to back that up. That was something that the team pointed out to us,” Dallery explained.

What began as a cold email to Lance Larson, co-director of SDSU's Graduate Program in Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity Clinic’s principal investigator, quickly evolved into a semester-long partnership through the Cybersecurity Clinic.

The program placed Leong, Martin and two other SDSU students with MDF to perform a detailed cybersecurity review, helping the business prepare for its upcoming accreditation milestone. Dallery said the company learned “we have a lot we still need to work on” to pass.

“They are providing feedback and teaching us what will make our network stronger, or what we're lacking and what to implement,” Dallery said. “It was all in our head. We talked about it, but there wasn’t that documentation. Now we’re going to have that.”

For Martin, the experience has been both educational and formative, and he’s confident his work with MDF will make him competitive in the job market after graduation.

“At the Cybersecurity Clinic, students are gaining experience with projects we typically would not encounter until years into our careers,” he said. “Employers are looking for people who understand CMMC and can contribute right away.”

Leong added while they're not directly working with the DoD, the experience offers valuable insight. “We're gaining experience with the security compliance that is required to work with the DoD,” he said.

The project is a hands-on application of a complex and often jargon-heavy federal compliance framework. Leong and Martin translated those often confusing technical standards into actionable steps for MDF. Their work includes everything from reviewing infrastructure to building network diagrams and providing suggestions. 

The collaboration reflects the Cybersecurity Clinic’s broader mission: to give students practical experience while serving community partners. The clinic, led by Larson, equips students with training, certification opportunities, and access to enterprise-level tools at no cost to the clients they serve.

“The relationship Avi and Chris have built with MDF Technologies is a perfect example of why we started the San Diego Cyber Clinic,” Larson said. “The students have been extremely thorough in their assessment and have obtained invaluable career experience throughout this collaboration, and we are proud to see MDF Technologies continuing to thrive in their industry with a little bit of help from SDSU.”

Beyond the technical work, the collaboration is helping the students build the soft skills valuable in any workplace.

"We're definitely building skills in communication, client management, and project planning," Leong said. "We're also working on developing our lessons learned and creating standards of operation that we hope to apply with our next client."

“It’s really rewarding,” Martin added. “The client themselves, they don’t actually pay for any of this. We’re providing it all as a free service.”

From MDF’s side, the appreciation goes both ways.

“It’s very rewarding to know that by doing this type of work, they’ll be able to step into something probably much bigger,” said Nick Dallery, president of MDF. “It’s really good to know that these guys are going to be able to put that on their resume.”

The San Diego Cyber Security Clinic—a partnership of SDSU, the Cyber Center of Excellence, California State University San Marcos, and National University—was launched with $1 million in grant funding and comprehensive support from Google’s Cybersecurity Clinics Fund.