University of Nebraska at Omaha Scholarship for Service Renewal/Outreach Project

内布拉斯加大学奥马哈分校（UNO）是指定的国家网络作战学术卓越中心（CAE-CO），提议继续并扩大其对网络部队(R)：服务奖学金（SFS）计划的参与，为进入政府工作队伍准备高素质的网络安全专业人员。此外，提案者寻求为SFS学者提供机会，让他们建立自己的夺旗（CTF）网络作战比赛，并举办一年一度的高中CTF活动。这些努力将产生一个可下载的、易于安装的CTF基础设施，该基础设施将与其他大学、社区学院和高中共享，并可用于招收网络安全新生。SFS计划资助解决网络安全教育和劳动力发展的项目，包括为网络安全学生颁发奖学金的资金。作为奖学金的回报，获奖者将在毕业后为联邦、州、地方或部落政府组织工作，担任与网络安全相关的职位，工作时间与奖学金的期限相同。学者们将构建一个“盒子里的CTF-网络操作（CTF- co）”项目，该项目将为高中夺旗活动生成一个完整的问题集，其中CTF中的问题映射到CAE-CO指定的知识单元（ku）。学生将为“黄金时间发布”记录和准备这个基础架构；通过让几个校外团体（例如，其他学生俱乐部，教师）从头开始安装基础架构，测试文档和软件包的有效性；开发调查功能，捕捉玩家参与CTF活动的挑战；并开发能力，使游戏作者能够识别每个开发挑战所需的网络安全概念，程序和判断。将进行评估，以确定过于困难的挑战，这些挑战可能会阻碍学生选择网络安全职业的CO途径。作为主办CTF活动的职责之一，SFS学生的任务是将团队的招募扩大到这些代表性不足的农村社区以及奥马哈地区的杜彻恩学院（Duchesne Academy）等女子高中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), a designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO), proposes to continue and expand its participation in the CyberCorps(R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to prepare highly-qualified cybersecurity professionals for entry into the government workforce. In addition, the proposers seek to provide opportunities for SFS scholars to construct their own Capture-the-Flag (CTF) cyber operations competition, as well as host an annual high school CTF event. These efforts will yield a downloadable, easy-to-install CTF infrastructure that will be shared with other universities, community colleges, and high schools, and may be utilized for recruiting new students to cybersecurity. The SFS program funds projects that address cybersecurity education and workforce development, including funding to award scholarships to students in cybersecurity. In return for their scholarships, recipients will work after graduation for a federal, state, local, or tribal government organization in a position related to Cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship.Scholars will be constructing a "CTF-Cyber Operations (CTF-CO) in a Box" project, which will result in a complete problem set for a High School Capture-the-Flag event where the questions in the CTF map to knowledge units (KUs) of the CAE-CO designation. The students will document and prepare this infrastructure for "prime time release;" test the validity of the documentation and the software packaging by having several outside university parties (e.g., other student clubs, faculty) install the infrastructure from scratch; develop survey capabilities that can capture player engagement with challenges in the CTF event; and develop capabilities that allow game authors to identify the cybersecurity concepts, procedures and judgments necessary for each developed challenge. An assessment will be conducted to identify challenges that are too hard and may discourage students from selecting the CO pathway for cybersecurity careers. As part of their responsibilities for hosting the CTF event, the SFS students will be tasked with expanding the recruiting for teams to these underrepresented rural communities and to female-only high schools such as Duchesne Academy in the Omaha area.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.