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NSA supports teaching cybersecurity to undergrads, middle schoolers

July 20, 2017

The United States National Security Agency wants the public to become savvier when it comes to cybersecurity and is providing funding to that end—supporting projects to teach the subject to undergraduate students and middle schoolers.

For example, Dr. Mengjun Xie, a University of Arkansas Little Rock associate professor of computer science, is working to build a virtual cybersecurity lab. He recently received an $85,912 addition to his original NSA grant, bringing his total NSA funding for the project to $124,527.

The project, titled “Networking and Network Security in the Cloud (NetSiC),” will address issues related to cloud-based computing environments and will help students practice networking and cyber-defense skills.

“This project is unique because it allows students to conduct networking and security practices in a computing cloud they choose, and the developed software will be free to use,” Xie said, as reported at Newswise. “While other cloud-based cybersecurity labs are available, they either do not provide enough flexibility or require users to pay in order to use their platform.”

Xie is known for his work in cybersecurity, network systems, data analytics, and social-network analysis in bioinformatics. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the College of William and Mary.

Xie will develop the NetSiC lab in the NEXUS (Networked and Complex Systems Security Research) Lab at UA Little Rock, which is among the institutions receiving the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense designation. The joint program of the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security is designed to reduce information infrastructure vulnerability through higher education and research.

By creating the NetSiC lab, Xie and his team aim to increase students’ knowledge of virtual networks and their ability to successfully protect and defend cloud networks.

The virtual lab will incorporate a group of 12 learning modules. When the project is completed, Xie will deliver the modules to the NSA, where they will become part of a cybersecurity curriculum that will be available to the public.

Xie’s lab will enable undergraduate students conduct cloud-networking and network-protection and -defense experiments. Another NSA-funded project is targeting a younger clientele: middle schoolers.

In that project, which may be the first for the state of Georgia, Columbus State University is partnering with the Muscogee County School District to develop and implement a course in cybersecurity education.

A $50,000 NSA grant allows Columbus State University’s TSYS School of Computer Science and its developing TSYS Center for Cybersecurity to work with Rothschild Middle School Leadership Academy to develop a course in cybersecurity education specifically for 7th- and 8th-grade students.

“We do not think that a cybersecurity curriculum of this magnitude has been attempted at the middle-school level in Georgia,” said Tom Hackett, chair of the university’s Department of Counseling, Foundations, and Leadership and executive director, P-12/University Partnerships, as reported at Newswise. “This STEM project is expected to raise interest in cybersecurity and will encourage students to continue learning about cybersecurity, a field very much in-demand by today’s workforce.”

The course will be structured on the NSA Cybersecurity First Principles but will be broken down into age-specific topics understandable by 7th- and 8th-grade students, Hackett said. The NSA Cybersecurity First principles include domain separation, process isolation, resource encapsulation, least privilege, modularity, layering, abstraction, data hiding, simplicity, and minimization.

About 140 7th- and 8th-grade students at Rothschild Middle School will have the appropriate prerequisite to take the year-long elective course on cybersecurity education during the 2017-2018 school year.

“Whether you are 6 or 60 years old, cybersecurity is important to us all,”* said Wayne Summers, professor and Distinguished Chairperson of CSU’s TSYS School of Computer Science. “By teaching the elements of cybersecurity in middle school, we will encourage safe computing practice as well as expand the pool of candidates for future cybersecurity professionals. Based on a comprehensive study supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, there are nearly 13,000 cybersecurity job openings in Georgia and nearly 350,000 openings nationally.”

Hackett said the course curriculum will be available for download and the course can be replicated in other middle schools across the nation.

*The average six- to 60-year-old probably could use a primer on computer security—starting with passwords. According to SplashData’s annual “Worst Passwords List,” the top worst password of 2016 remained 123456, followed by password, both unchanged from 2015.

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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