CIRI & Illinois Business Consulting to Boost Cyber Secure Dashboard Transition
When Randall Sandone, executive director of Illinois’ Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI), was charged with bringing two new CIRI technologies to the marketplace, he and other CIRI leaders had the foresight to seek the expertise they needed to do this effectively. Fortunately, the knowledge they required was right around the corner at Illinois Business Consulting (IBC), one of the largest and leading student-run professional consulting programs in the country, housed in the Gies College of Business.
CIRI is a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence research organization with a mission to positively impact the security and resilience of critical infrastructure around the nation. One of the ways CIRI accomplishes this mission is by developing tools and technologies and transitioning them to market. When commercializing technology, they aim to make sure the products’ impact in the marketplace is sustainable. However, that requires a focused effort and range of expertise that Sandone realized CIRI did not have as a research organization.
“We didn’t have the bandwidth or skill set to do the necessary research in areas such as market and competitive analysis or pricing analysis, but IBC did, and they did a fantastic job,” Sandone said.
IBC is a highly competitive consulting organization comprised of approximately 250 students, ranging from undergraduate freshmen to graduate students from nine colleges at the University. The students are divided into numerous teams that complete more than 25 consulting projects each semester.
