Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

George Mason faculty are tackling cybersecurity’s talent pipeline problem

Jennifer Anzaldi — Fri, 10 May 2024 17:01:06 +0000

George Mason faculty are tackling cybersecurity’s talent pipeline problem Jennifer Anzaldi Fri, 05/10/2024 - 13:01

If you’re a cybercriminal, the latest news on cybersecurity talent shortfalls should put a smile on your face. For example, the majority of cybersecurity leaders report that their teams are understaffed, and they have problems retaining qualified professionals.

But for Nirup Menon, a ��AV professor of information systems and operations management (ISOM), and Brian Ngac, an instructor in the ISOM area, this workforce challenge is a golden career opportunity for the young people of Northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C., area.

Nirup Menon and Brian Ngac

The pair recently won a two-year award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, to create unique experiential learning opportunities and workshops designed to enhance cybersecurity education and workforce development.

Working closely with industry partners Mobius Consulting and Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Menon and Ngac will recruit and help select students to work on actual cybersecurity projects. “They need to have taken some fundamental cyber class ahead of time,” Menon clarifies. “We want students with a commitment to the field. It allows you to get experience but it’s also competitive.”

Throughout the 12-week projects, students will receive mentoring both from the industry participant and from business faculty. “We run it in an agile scrum-like manner,” Ngac says. “Every week, we ask ‘What did you do?’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘What are the challenges that are impacting your work?’” If students run into trouble, faculty mentors can work with industry managers to help them get back on track.

“We’re trying to build not just the cyber workforce but the skills as well,” Ngac says.

Menon and Ngac have developed a specialty in this type of hands-on learning, which they have dubbed the Professional Readiness Experiential Program (PREP). More than 100 Virginia-based undergraduates and 20 industry participants have participated in PREP, which includes projects funded by two Commonwealth Cybersecurity Initiative Experiential Learning grants in collaboration with Mobius and IDA.

“PREP not only focuses on cybersecurity projects, but also works on many business process improvement projects,” says Ngac. "Honors and high-performing ISOM students work on real-world projects with industry participants on identifying technical solutions to business challenges through rigorous research, modelling, analysis, quantification, risk management, implementation planning, and, at times, execution.”

The NIST award also incorporates workshops for students who are new to cybersecurity but interested in exploring it as a career option. Workshops will be launched in collaboration with Trinity Washington University (TWU), an HBCU whose College of Arts and Sciences is women-only. For a field such as cybersecurity, which continues to face diversity challenges, the participation of organizations such as TWU is essential.

“We want to bring in students who have not thought of cybersecurity as a field, because they think it’s all engineering, hacking and coding,” Menon says. The workshops will emphasize the variety of functions that are integral to the space, such as management and auditing, in addition to engineering.

Students and industry participants in the current CCI Experiential Learning Projects

“It’s not just tech, there may be creativity involved in anticipating scams and threats,” Ngac explains. “These are different things we’ll be bringing up in the workshop in terms of roleplaying what cybercriminals might do, or how someone might try to socially engineer an attack.”

Unlike a standard grant, the NIST award is structured as a cooperative agreement in which the funding agency will collaborate in shaping and delivering programs as they evolve.

“The advantage of working with NIST is that top people work there. They are the standards body, so they have seen and surveyed a lot of industry,” Menon says. He also lauds NIST’s high-level view of cybersecurity and its implications. “They’re not just looking at technology but also public policy, human factors, etc. It’s a holistic approach.”

Organizations interested in being an industry participant (whether they have cybersecurity-focused or business process improvement-focused projects) with PREP are encouraged to contact Brian Ngac.

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Strategic Direction

Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks

Colleen Rich — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:39:13 +0000

Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks Colleen Rich Thu, 05/02/2024 - 09:39

A team of ��AV researchers is probing the psychology behind cyberattacks as part of a U.S. intelligence community program aimed at turning the tables on hackers.

Illustration by Getty Images

As the prevalence and severity of cyberattacks continue to grow, the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA) has turned its focus on how best to exploit the weakest link in cyberattacks: the human factor.

Under a new IARPA program, researchers hope to better understand cyber attackers’ cognitive vulnerabilities and decision-making biases and use those vulnerabilities to derail future attacks.

Researchers Daniel Barbará, Giuseppe Ateniese, and Gerald Matthews were recently selected as part of a broader team of computer science, cybersecurity, and psychology experts to forge new research pathways and deliver cutting-edge technology as part of IARPA’s Reimagining Security with Cyberpsychology-Informed Network Defense, or ReSCIND, program.

Daniel Barbara. Photo by Office of University Branding

The team of researchers will build defensive tools that first cue in on hackers’ human limitations and use those weaknesses to delay or derail the attack while it is underway.

“You want to make them waste their time,” said Barbará, a computer science professor at George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing. “The more they waste their time, the least damage they’re going to do.”

This can be accomplished by luring hackers with decoys such as false networks or documents to distract them.

But the trick is two-fold. The decoys must first and foremost appear to be real. They also need to entice the hackers away from their original aim. The latter is where understanding the psychological factors that influence hackers is essential.

As part of the first phase of the ReSCIND program, researchers will aim to fill gaps that exist in the current understanding of human cognition and decision making that influence cyber attackers’ behavior.

“It’s a challenging topic to address because hackers, of course, tend to be somewhat secretive,” Matthews, a professor of psychology at George Mason, said. “There aren’t many opportunities to study hacker psychology.”

Giuseppe Ateniese. Photo provided

Matthews said the current understanding of hackers’ behavior that provides the baseline for their research comes from several areas of study in psychology. Key among those areas is human performance and in particular how emotional states might influence performance.

“Hackers themselves are under pressure and potentially anxious about getting caught,” Matthews said. “They’re anxious about looking foolish to the people that they are working with.”

Cultural factors that motivate hackers are also important to consider and may vary greatly among hackers. Thrill-seeking college-age hackers, for example, would have different cultural norms and motives than highly trained professionals acting on behalf of a nation-state adversary, Matthews said.

Researchers hope to further understand the full scope of psychological factors that influence hackers, including how to measure, predict, and induce their cognitive vulnerabilities.

“There’s a certain amount of psychology that allows you to link the emotional reactions that hackers might have to cognitive biases and other vulnerabilities in performance,” Matthews said. “So, in this first part of the research, we’re trying to sketch out what some of those vulnerabilities might be.”

As part of the second phase, researchers will further define when cyberpsychology-informed defenses can best be used and how to determine the success of those defenses. The final phase will focus on modeling, adapting, and automating those defenses.

Ateniese, a computer science professor and eminent scholar in cybersecurity, said the ReSCIND program reflects the growing importance of cyberpsychology research in shaping emerging technology.

Gerald Matthews. Photo provided

“I see a myriad of excellent applications, not just this project,” Ateniese said. “As you can imagine, people today are building AI systems that either mimic or seek to improve upon human behavior. So, the psychology perspective is very intriguing.”

The ReSCIND program will run for nearly four years and is being carried out through research contracts awarded across five teams.

Barbará, Ateniese, and Matthews’ research will contribute to a ReSCIND contract awarded to SRI International, an independent nonprofit research institute headquartered in California.

The George Mason team will work alongside experts from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Margin Research, Research and Assessment Design: Science Solution, Two Six Technologies, University of Florida, and Virtual Reality Medical Center.

In many ways, the project is a natural progression for the three professors who have worked together on several previous projects requiring a multidisciplinary approach.

They were first introduced in 2021 by Amarda Shehu, a computer science professor and co-director at the time of the George Mason’s transdisciplinary Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP).

A call for proposals from Virginia’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative for a project that sought to bridge cybersecurity and human factors research to help users build secure passwords immediately brought to mind Barbará, Ateniese, and Matthews’ expertise.

“I always had the agenda of putting teams together and finding some funding opportunities so that then they could obtain preliminary results through which to demonstrate credibility for larger projects,” Shehu said.

The match has led to a series of successful projects by the team, including the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative password project and a project focused on distinguishing authentic videos from deepfakes.

“The IARPA project is, in some sense, an example of the culmination of an activity, how you put a team together,” Shehu said. “They find some funding so that they can start that relationship and then that kind of blossoms into a larger project. It's really a perfect example of what we want to see in […] in general at Mason in terms of transdisciplinary research and the fruit of that research.”

Shehu, now associate vice president for research for Mason’s Institute for Digital Innovation, said bringing teams together with broad collective expertise is critical to solving the most complex impediments to technological progress.

“The most challenging problems nowadays don't reside specifically within one discipline,” she said. “They bridge disciplines.”

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Amarda Shehu

Daniel Barbará

Giuseppe Ateniese

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Commonwealth Cyber Initiative’s Cybersecurity Traineeship launches careers in cybersecurity

Teresa Donnellan — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 03:36:28 +0000

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative’s Cybersecurity Traineeship launches careers in cybersecurity Teresa Donnellan Mon, 02/12/2024 - 22:36

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Northern Virginia Node (CCI NoVa Node) is preparing for the third iteration of its Cybersecurity Traineeship Program, which offers a seven-week course to Northern Virginia residents interested in pivoting into the cybersecurity sector followed by career support from ��AV and Northern Virginia Community College professionals.

CCI NoVa Node's region is outlined in light blue.

Course Beginnings

The program’s intensive, full-time course curriculum familiarizes trainees with subjects relevant to Information Technology and cybersecurity, such as Python, database design, SPLUNK, and AWS. Trainees attend class all day and complete homework assignments outside of class.

Keyvon Riley, Aaron Hornbuckle, and Walter WIlliams, members of the program’s first cohort, credit the program with launching their careers in tech.

“The course days go by really quickly, so practicing is important,” said Riley. “The workload was very fair and needed in order to learn as much as a person can in the allotted time.”

“Through a fast-paced learning environment, we were introduced to many concepts, processes, and tools that would be useful and relevant to entering this new environment,” said Hornbuckle. “It also prepared me by showing me how much there is to know and learn in this field, which continuously expands the longer I've worked in the industry.”

Williams said the program exceeded his expectations: "Despite my initial nervousness due to a lack of industry understanding, I left feeling equipped with a solid foundation of cybersecurity knowledge."

Scott Wood, the associate director of IT and Business Programs at Northern Virginia Community College, who designs the course curriculum each year, adapts the course to the shifting needs of the tech sector by consulting industry partners. Next year, Wood will also incorporating guidelines set forth in “National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy,” a 2023 report from the White House.

“In addition to assessing technical skills, trainees are evaluated on participation, curiosity, creativity, communication, collaboration, and professionalism,” said Wood. “I’ve been amazed at the level of dedication and commitment from trainees in both iterations of the program. The program runs June through August, when most people are thinking about summer vacations and outdoor activities. The trainees in both programs really put in the work. They didn’t just show up for class. They took an active role in learning the skills and remained engaged throughout the seven-week program.”

Time for Internships

After completing the course, high performers in the program are placed in full-time internship roles with tech companies in Northern Virginia. Riley, Hornbuckle, and Williams each completed internships with Peraton before being offered full-time positions at the company. Riley and Hornbuckle are now cyber security systems engineers, and Williams is a UX/UI designer.

"It was an honor to gain on-the-job cybersecurity experience," Williams said. "My internship provided opportunities to shadow projects, contribute to use case development, and apply my UX/UI design skills in unexpected ways."

Riley noted that behind his success was a significant amount of work. For example, between his internship and starting his formal start date at Peraton, Riley became CompTIA Security+ certified.

“My industry landing did and still does surprise me, because cybersecurity is not for beginners,” Riley explained. “Most cybersecurity [workforce] members have five years or more in the IT field before landing a cyber role. I did not know that when I landed my role and thus had a hard time grasping the level of IT I entered into. Nevertheless, I hit the ground running and would not change it.”

Moving in New Directions

Riley will begin a master’s in information technology in the fall. “I have made the most of every opportunity since the traineeship, and it has led to my success today,” he said. “My future in tech is bright!”

Hornbuckle echoed Riley's sentiments, emphasizing the program's role in facilitating a smooth transition into his role. The program's emphasis on continuous learning resonated strongly with Hornbuckle, who noted the ever-evolving nature of the tech landscape and the importance of staying abreast of emerging trends.

A former fine arts teacher, Williams' transition into a UX/UI designer underscores the program's role as a pathway to career reinvention. "The program has undoubtedly led me to a rewarding career in tech/cybersecurity," he said, adding, "I was surprised by the opportunity to utilize my UX/UI design skills within cybersecurity. This fusion of disciplines reflects the dynamic nature of the field and the endless possibilities for professional growth."

With a curriculum designed in collaboration with industry experts and with a commitment to continuous improvement, CCI NoVa Node’s Cybersecurity Traineeship Program offers individuals seeking to break into the cybersecurity and IT sectors skills, confidence, and resources to embark on rewarding careers in technology.

“CCI created a great way to give new opportunities to those wanting a career change into cybersecurity,” said Riley. “I will always be grateful I was one of the first people to have successfully completed this program."

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Vijay Shah joins $2M NTIA-funded project on 5G cybersecurity

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 21:06:24 +0000

Vijay Shah joins $2M NTIA-funded project on 5G cybersecurity Teresa Donnellan Thu, 02/08/2024 - 16:06

��AV researcher Vijay Shah has joined a $2 million project to develop a system to secure 5G Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture.

Funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the project "A Holistic Cybersecurity Testing Framework for 5G Radio Access Networks" is a collaboration with Virginia Tech, Penn State University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Shah, who leads Mason’s NextG Wireless Lab, will be allocated nearly a quarter of the project’s budget and be working with Nishith Tripathi and Jeff Reed from Virginia Tech, Syed Rafiul Hussain from Penn State University, and Bo Tang from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Vijay Shah

Security vulnerabilities in O-RAN present a critical cybersecurity challenge in the era of 5G. The team aims to create “a holistic and automated cybersecurity testing framework for O-RAN,” per the project’s executive summary.

Shah will also receive funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) to investigate fingerprinting technology for 5G/NextG O-RAN supply chain risk management, additional funding that highlights the multifaceted approach taken by the NextG Wireless Lab to address 5G networks cybersecurity challenges.

As part of these initiatives, the NextG Wireless Lab is actively growing its research team, with opportunities for postdoctoral researchers and PhD students interested in O-RAN cybersecurity, testing, and supply chain management.

Those interested in contributing to cutting-edge research in this field should email Shah.

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Gisele Stolz wins CCI Impact Award

Colleen Rich — Mon, 01 May 2023 17:49:42 +0000

Gisele Stolz wins CCI Impact Award Colleen Rich Mon, 05/01/2023 - 13:49

In This Story

Liza Wilson Durant

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) has awarded ��AV’s Gisele Stolz its prestigious Impact Award. Stolz is the senior director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs at Mason, the lead university for the CCI Northern Virginia Node.

Gisele Stolz, senior director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

“Gisele’s leadership in developing and expanding the cybersecurity startup internship program along with her work on the Commonwealth Cyber Incubator + Accelerator Program (CCI+A) have directly impacted the Virginia innovation ecosystem,” CCI Executive Director Luiz DaSilva said. “We are delighted to present her with this award.”

The annual flagship award is given to an individual, team, group, or organization who through their CCI activities has conducted breakthrough cybersecurity research or innovation or developed a creative means to improve cybersecurity workforce opportunities for our industry partners and students.

“From envisioning a cybersecurity startup internship program, to its development, success and, ultimately, scaling, to building out the structure of the Commonwealth Cyber Incubator + Accelerator Program (CCI+A) cohort programming, few people within the CCI network have had such a widespread impact as Gisele,” said Liza Wilson Durant, director of the CCI Northern Virginia Node and associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement at Mason.

“Under her oversight, the cybersecurity startup internship program has attracted more than 700 applicants, placing 83 undergraduate students with more than 50 companies,” Durant noted in the award nomination. “The competitiveness of this program has allowed her to ensure that the highest-quality candidates are placed, increasing the buy-in of, and positive impact to, our industry partners. Of the students placed, 73% were offered follow-up positions with their host company—a combination of additional, nonsupported internships and full-time employment offers.”

Impact Award nomination reviewers highlighted the “impressive results” of the programs Stolz created and fostered.

Working with students and startups inspires Stolz. “I’m grateful I’m helping to give these students the ability to get a job and the skills they need to start a career. It’s an amazing feeling to be making an impact on their lives and careers.”

Working at a startup requires a risk-taking mentality, Stolz said. For students who find uncertainty invigorating, a startup is a great fit.

“Students are saying their work at a startup is so much more impactful. They’re a key member of the team, not just a cog.”

It’s not only students who benefit from her work. Startups find interns, many of whom become employees, that they need to grow.

Stolz is constantly improving the programs, adding what she learns during regular check-ins with students and companies. She also puts the lean startup methodology lessons to work. “I’m applying what I’m teaching in my business classes. It’s a continual improvement loop.”

CCI is a statewide network of 41 Virginia public universities and colleges and includes more than 300 researchers and partners focused on cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and intelligence, to further research, innovation, and workforce development within the state.

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Commonwealth Cyber Initiative CATAPULT fund launches translational research projects

Martha Bushong — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:18:33 +0000

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative CATAPULT fund launches translational research projects Martha Bushong Thu, 10/06/2022 - 14:18

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Liza Wilson Durant

Learn About the CCI

As researchers and their teams work to answer questions and find solutions for protecting privacy and securing information through cybersecurity innovation, many set their sights on commercialization. Still, the path from research ideas to consumer products can be long and winding. To help straighten the path the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) is supporting a Cyber Acceleration, Translation, and Advanced Prototyping for University Linked Technology (CATAPULT) Fund. The fund’s purpose‑‑advance collaborative translational research projects among CCI partners, to speed up the progress of academic research outcomes to the marketplace.

"It is truly exciting to tap into the breadth of innovation from academic institutions across the Commonwealth and introduce these faculty inventors to the opportunity to expand the impact of their research through commercialization,” says Liza Wilson Durant, associate dean, strategic initiatives and community engagement, College of Engineering and Computing. “It is just the right time for Virginia to support and accelerate cybersecurity innovation as the Commonwealth establishes its role as a magnet for new companies with the best and brightest solutions to the nation's greatest cybersecurity challenges."

In July 2022 CCI awarded seven teams from four universities in the Northern Virginia Node funding for their projects. These research teams received up to $50,000, with funding increments released based on the achievement of agreed-upon milestones. The teams and their projects are as follows.

Protecting Smartphones from Fingerphoto Spoofing
��AV Assistant Professor Emanuela Marasco’s the project addresses the urgent need for a mechanism that properly secures smartphone technology. Contactless fingerprint authentication allows faster capture times, unattended operations, and high hygiene. These systems, however, are still in the early stages of development. Although researchers are advancing matching, the risk of spoofing for contactless authentication must be mitigated as well. This project addresses the problem.

Distributed Online Intrusion Detection System for IoT devices via Power Side-channel Auditing
As the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has increased rapidly, IoT botnets and information stealer attacks have exploited the vulnerabilities of IoT devices. It is still challenging, however, to detect the initial intrusion on IoT devices before massive attacks. Professor Gang Zhou, from the College of William & Mary, and his partners at Old Dominion University are addressing the challenge of the lack of accurate models in real-time for ubiquitous attack detection with their project.

Algorithm Evaluation for Backdoor Detection and Mitigation in Remote Sensing Systems
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has advanced to the point that it is inescapable in life and work. AI models extract knowledge from data to make decisions. Though AI has achieved state-of-the-art performances for many applications, it can be easily deceived by the backdoor attack. Old Dominion University Professor Jiang Li and his partners at Maxar’s project leverages a novel approach to addressing this concern.

RF Fingerprinting Techniques for Millimeter-Wave Device Authentication in 5G/NextG Wireless Communication
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology is a key enabler for 5G and NextG wireless communications as it supports applications that require high-throughput and ultra-low latency. Due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, however, mmWave communication is vulnerable to various attacks. With this project Kai Zeng, associate professor, ��AV and his team aim to develop robust and efficient techniques to address these vulnerabilities.

Extended Reality Empowered 5G Telemedicine Mentoring
Old Dominion University Associate Professor Sachin Shetty’s project looks at the development and commercialization of a 5G telemedicine platform that leverages Extended Reality technologies and a 5G environment. Because 5G technology supports massive capacity connections and fast data rates it has the potential to transform healthcare training and service delivery. One example, 5 G-enabled telemedicine, connects remotely located medical providers and allows access to near real-time data, and permits split-second decision-making critical in health care environments.

Super Timelines
When a cybersecurity incident occurs, analysts need to quickly construct a forensic timeline of events to assess the impact and plan the response. This effort typically involves extracting logs and other artifacts from various sources and then combining them into a single list, ordering them by date and time. Only then can an analyst look for clues to help better understand the course of events before, during, and after the incident. With Super Timelines, Florian Buchholz, professor at James Madison University, and his partners at Gigasheet (https://www.gigasheet.com) will develop a turnkey solution for this problem, based on a modern cloud-based infrastructure.

“Without this funding from CCI, the research and start-ups that are so critical to Virginia’s strategy of building a high-impact cyber economy would not have the opportunity to meet the wonderful members of the tech community who have rallied around them to provide advice, guidance, and structure to launching new products and companies,” says Associate Vice President of the Office of Research Innovation and Economic Development, at ��AV, Paula Sorrell.

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Drawing a diverse cybersecurity applicant pool

Martha Bushong — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 12:54:47 +0000

Drawing a diverse cybersecurity applicant pool Martha Bushong Thu, 10/06/2022 - 08:54

If you’re developing a program or event and want to learn how to attract a diverse audience, take a lesson from a recent Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) success story. This spring, the CCI Northern Virginia Node sponsored a traineeship and apprenticeship program that attracted about 400 diverse applicants for 21 positions.

On October 27 at 11 a.m. CCI NoVa Node Program Manager Jordan Mason will describe his successful outreach strategy, and provide a possible blueprint for you to follow, CCI’s Inclusion & Diversity Committee is sponsoring the event as part of its mission of workforce development which includes a commitment to increasing the number of underrepresented groups in the cybersecurity field.

Mason’s discussion will focus on strategies that the NoVa Node uses to field diverse cohorts in its programs, with a focus on its Cybersecurity Traineeship and Apprenticeship Program. These topics will include the identification of an ideal threshold in program representation and building relationships.

About Jordan Mason
Mason is a certified Project Management Professional who cares deeply about building systems and processes that promote equity and accessibility. Before working in his current role, he spent six years working in Student Affairs at George Washington University, helping the university’s portfolio of student organizations navigate institutional financial policies and processes.

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Information systems and operations management profs awarded $100,000 Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Grant

Jennifer Anzaldi — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 04:25:50 +0000

Information systems and operations management profs awarded $100,000 Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Grant Jennifer Anzaldi Tue, 08/09/2022 - 00:25

In This Story

Brian Ngac

Nirup Menon

Brian Ngac

Brian Ngac and Nirup Menon, from the information systems and operations management area at the School of Business, were recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) located in Arlington, Virginia. This Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Grant was awarded for their proposal to develop a new experiential learning program that will engage students and companies from the Commonwealth.

According to Menon and Ngac, there is a workforce and skills shortage internationally in the cyber security market across all sectors of the economy. Experiential learning can counteract this shortage.

“We are hoping to grow the cyber workforce to address the skills gap that currently exists,” says Ngac. Ngac and Menon propose providing students with hands-on training through real projects, with real industry participants. “With this grant, we will choose 24 cyber-interested undergraduates and graduate students from across the state to participate, along with eight industry participants over the spring 2023 and summer 2023 semesters. Each cohort will run for about 12 weeks.”

Ngac and Menon’s proposal for this program stemmed from the successful past performance of their experiential learning course titled MIS 491: Technology Analysis & Proposals with Clients. After three semesters of offering the course, Ngac and Menon have overseen 15 projects by students ranging from cyber to business process improvement. Working in teams, students planned and recommended technology solutions for solving business problems.

Nirup Menon

“Having run experiential learning courses since spring 2021, our team’s methodology has evolved to provide students an effective and enjoyable experience to be remembered, and leveraged for their early career years,” says Ngac.

The integration of industry participation is the key differentiator for Ngac and Menon. In addition to recruiting students interested in the cyber security field, the duo plans to recruit industry leaders interested in mentorship, and then work with these leaders to design the challenging and engaging cyber projects that will be used. Industry leaders will also guide the students through the execution of these projects.

“The experience benefits our industry participants by leveraging our talent pool for recruitment opportunities, and by providing a cost-effective method for attempting new/risky projects,” says the team.

“I am really excited about this grant as it will serve the dual purpose of training students across the Commonwealth using hands-on projects, and addressing the critical need of businesses in the area to find cyber ready individuals,” says Pallab Sanyal, area chair of information systems and operations management.

At the conclusion of the 12-week course, students will present their work and lessons-learned to the CCI community, and other business and academic leaders.

“By integrating business leaders from the industry into the students’ learning journey, our experiential learning efforts will prepare students with practical skills and theoretical understanding to be more marketable and effective in the workforce,” says Menon.

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Mason students build drones as part of Commonwealth Cyber Initiative

Colleen Rich — Tue, 31 May 2022 14:11:38 +0000

Mason students build drones as part of Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Colleen Rich Tue, 05/31/2022 - 10:11

In This Story

Mohamed Gebril

��AV Cybersecurity Engineering associate professor Mohamed Gebril led a team of students to the first-ever BattleDrone competition, an exercise coordinated through the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative.

Learn about Mason's Cybersecurity Engineering Bachelor's

In April, Mason professor Mohamed Gebril (center in green) took a team of students to Commonwealth Cyber Initiative's BattleDrones Competition at Virginia Tech’s Drone Park. Photo by Peter Means/Virginia Tech

In April, Mohamed Gebril, an associate professor in ��AV’s Cyber Security Engineering Department, took a team of students into “battle.” The team traveled to Blacksburg, Virginia, for a BattleDrones Competition that was hosted by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) at Virginia Tech’s Drone Park.

Gebril emphasized that the inaugural battle was not really a competition but a learning experience. CCI began working on this competition in 2020, but the pandemic halted its progress. This was the first time the event was held.

“It was not a competition per se. All the teams worked together to get this project off the ground,” said Gebril, who teaches in Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing. “CCI-VT ran into some issues with some of the computer vision tools, but overall it was a great learning experience.”

The main objective of the competition, according to Gebril, was to have student teams assemble their own drones with materials provided by CCI-VT research group, as well as promote interest in these kinds of activities among younger students.

For the competition, Gebril pulled together a team of Mason cyber security engineering majors interested in hands-on opportunities, which included senior Kylie Amison, senior Corrado Apostolakis, senior Brandon Henry, junior Casey Cho, sophomore Zaid Osta, and Mahmoud Zaghloul, an area high school student.

By all accounts, it was a successful trip.

“The team did really well,” Gebril said. “They were able to assemble the drone successfully. We are also working on continuing this project by adding cybersecurity features to enhance this learning experience.”

Will they compete again?

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Our students love this project and how it applies concepts learned in classrooms toward this hands-on activity.”

CCI is a network of Virginia industry, higher education, and economic development partners dedicated to cybersecurity research, innovation, and workforce development. Mason leads the Northern Virginia Node of the network.

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Research teams address multidisciplinary cyber challenges

Martha Bushong — Fri, 06 May 2022 17:43:57 +0000

Research teams address multidisciplinary cyber challenges Martha Bushong Fri, 05/06/2022 - 13:43

In This Story

Hemant Purohit

Vivian Genaro Motti

Whether you are an experienced software developer, a teen texting on a smartphone, or an older adult checking a bank statement, cybersecurity is part of your life. Humans and computers interact every minute of every day and cybersecurity is there to keep information safe and actions private. But normal human behavior can compromise safety and privacy.

In 2022, researchers funded by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative’s (CCI) Northern Virginia Node (NoVa Node) will be exploring the impact of human behavior on cybersecurity systems. Divided into six teams, the researchers will seek to leverage the power of their academic expertise in the social sciences, and related fields. The teams include faculty from the Colleges of Engineering and Computing, Humanities and Social Sciences, Education and Human Development, and the School of Business. Each team will explore a different aspect of the problem as they aim to translate those understandings into solutions or areas for additional investigation that can impact the welfare of Virginians. Two of those teams are being led by faculty from the Department of Information Sciences and Technology.

“Human-Centric Training for Privacy and Security Controls: Bridging the Awareness Gap for Diverse Populations”

PI: Vivian Genero Motti, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), ��AV; Co-PIs: Samy El-Tawab, and Ahmad Salman, College of Integrated Sciences, James Madison University

If you retired from the workforce 25 years ago, before Wi-Fi, online shopping, banking, or smartphones, you are likely vulnerable to cyberattacks. In fact, older adults face a disproportionate risk of suffering cyberattacks; still, they do not have access to resources and educational materials suitable to meet their needs related to human behavior and privacy protection.

Vivian Motti and her team want to do something about that. They plan to reach out to underrepresented users and characterize their level of awareness about cybersecurity. Motti and her team believe that gaining a better understanding of these populations will help inform educational content development, providing content, language, and design aspects that are all suitable to their specific user profiles.

“By adopting a user-centric design approach, this project will ensure that cybersecurity training meets users' needs for minority groups. By involving older adults front and center in the research agenda, we will establish training contents that are appropriate to their level of understanding,” says Motti.  Also, besides following the training contents and retaining what they learn, they will be able to act and prevent potential attacks that could pose privacy risks.

"Characterizing Biases in Automated Scam Detection Tools for Social Media to Aid Individuals with Developmental Disabilities" 

PI: Hemant Purohit, CEC; Co-PIs: Géraldine Walther, CHHS; Matt Peterson, CHHS; YooSun Chung, CEHD 

Designers of scam detection tools often focus on improving the computational accuracy of the methods, especially those with state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML)-based techniques, but their understanding of the diverse human behavior can be limited. This project aims to build a foundation for inclusive cybersecurity technologies to protect individuals with disabilities from online scams using a unique interdisciplinary collaborative approach between computing and non-computing researchers.

Specifically, the team’s objective is to uncover the biases in the existing scam detection techniques for social media using NLP and ML methods. “We will conduct Eye Tracking analyses using a labeled scam dataset of social media posts from existing literature on online cybersecurity and study the differences between the attention patterns of individuals with and without developmental disabilities when perceiving scam posts,” says Hemant Purohit.

The project hopes to gain insights that will support cybersecurity training development for reducing online fraud for individuals with special education needs. At the same time, the researchers want to identify limitations in automated scam detection tools and help create more effective cybersecurity tools that can protect user groups in our communities.

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Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

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