Catalyst Project: Increasing Access and Inclusiveness in Cybersecurity through Lab Experiences

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Catalyst Projects provide support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to work towards establishing research capacity of faculty to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate education and research. It is expected that the award will further the faculty member's research capability, improve research and teaching at the institution, and involve undergraduate students in research experiences. Shaw University seeks to establish a dedicated Cyber Operations Lab on campus. The lab will consist of workstations capable of hosting virtualized environments where students can engage in simulated cyber operations, such as, red-team/blue-team exercises, vulnerability assessments, capture-the-flag-competitions, etc. The lab will also provide students a secure and isolated environment to practice skills which should not be exercised in public domains, such as vulnerability scanning and penetration testing.The Cyber Operations Lab will support the Cyber Operations 12-course concentration of the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree at Shaw University. The Cyber Operations concentration provide students with a foundation in programming, data structures, networks, security policy and risk, virtualization, malware analysis, and ethical hacking. A physical lab is required for students to learn those skills on actual hardware and software they can expect to encounter in their future cybersecurity roles. Accordingly, this project will support the establishment of a lab with hardware capable of running multiple virtual machines with isolated network environments and software, such as Packet Tracer, WireShark, Process Hacker, and ProcDot, to conduct network and malware analysis. In addition, the Cyber Operations Lab will be used to offer cybersecurity-related events for high school students to increase interest and build a pipeline for them to enter the workforce through Shaw University. Finally, the Cyber Operations Lab will house the Cy(Bear)security Research Group which is focused on Internet of Things intrusion detection using Artificial Immune Systems and Deep Neural Network for dynamic network monitoring and medical device penetration testing to identify any vulnerabilities or weaknesses. This project will give students the opportunity to learn desirable skills in cybersecurity and help to close the minority representation gap that exists in the STEM workforce.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.