National Louis University isn't a cybersecurity company - it's a private university founded in 1886, headquartered in Chicago, with campuses in Wheeling, Lisle, and Tampa, plus a nationwide online presence. The school serves over 9,700 students annually across more than 80 career-focused programs spanning five colleges, including the College of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Graduate School of Business and Leadership, and the National College of Education. More than 70,000 alumni have passed through its programs.
For anyone tracking the cybersecurity talent pipeline, NLU is worth noting: its catalog includes professional certificates and graduate programs that feed adjacent workforce domains - behavioral sciences, business leadership, and IT-adjacent career tracks. The NLU Forward Scholarship covers 100% of tuition and fees for eligible Illinois students, which matters when you're thinking about widening the aperture of who gets into the field. Accessible education at scale is the thesis here.
The university's roots trace back to Elizabeth Harrison's founding mission to train women as kindergarten teachers - a progressive bet for the 19th century. Today that ethos extends to programs ranked among the Best Colleges for Women by Newsweek. No SOC team, no threat intel shop, no proprietary security tooling. But if you're hiring, the institution is producing credentialed graduates across disciplines that increasingly intersect with security operations, risk management, and organizational resilience.
