MC Fall 2020

TECHNOLOGY
New School of
Cybersecurity
Seeks to Build National Alliance
By AviYonce Scott
Image by: NICHOLAS CLARK
Since the beginning of this year, many of our
mid-pandemic social experiences have become
solely digital. As our lives become more public
and present online, increasing amounts of data
about us is more available on social platforms
like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, and
others. We like to think the information we put
on the web is protected by privacy policies and
two-step authentication, but what if there is a
breach? Breaches can compromise your identity,
private, and financial information, and even
the most secure institutions could expose you.
The more information we trust online makes us
more vulnerable, which increases our need for
protection or cybersecurity.
“Sanzo says they use
what is called a network
improvement community
(NIC) where each team’s
findings are reported
back to a larger network
for discussion and deeper
understanding.”
Old Dominion University has found a way
to begin to address our vulnerabilities with
tech and education while also bridging a
gap within the cybersecurity workforce. The
Cybersecurity Inclusive Pathways toward
Higher Education and Research (CIPHER) is a
project created by a team of faculty researchers
who are redefining cybersecurity education
for students at ODU and beyond. The initiative
was headed by the project’s principal
investigator, Dr. Hongyi “Michael” Wu and
project manager, Dr. Karen L. Sanzo. CIPHER
has made significant strides to work alongside
the Center for Cybersecurity Education and
Research (CCSER) to establish the first ever
School for Cybersecurity in the fall of 2020.
As a growing research institution, ODU’s
Cooper, M. (2017, July 24). 36,000 unfilled Va. jobs have $88,000 starting pay, governor says. Retrieved October 06, 2020, from https://www.wtvr.com/2017/07/24/virginia-computer-jobs/
Garvey, J. (2020, August 06). ODU Team Working on Initiative to Grow and Diversify Cybersecurity Education. Retrieved October 06, 2020, from https://www.odu.edu/news/2020/8/cipher_project
Morgan, S. (2020, August 04). Cybersecurity Talent Crunch to Create 3.5 Million Unfilled Jobs Globally By 2021. Retrieved October 06, 2020, from https://cybersecurityventures.com/jobs/
“The program was a great opportunity to build
an inclusive community for future cybersecurity
workforce, so we developed a proposal which was
selected by the NSF for funding.”
decision to open a School for Cybersecurity is
a direct response to growing student interest
in the cybersecurity program. Student enrollment
grew from 11 to over 800 students in
only the span of a few years. Principal investigator,
Dr. Wu states that CIPHER’s goal is to
address various issues within and around the
campus’ community.
“The program offers cutting-edge educational
experiences to students and professionals
in the field of cybersecurity,” said Dr. Wu “It
also develops high-impact, cross-disciplinary
research initiatives that center cybersecurity
so we can be a source of cybersecurity expertise
to the community, Hampton Roads, the
Commonwealth of Virginia, and the nation.”
According to predictions from Cybersecurity
Ventures and other experts, an estimated
3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs will be
available in the U.S. by 2021. In 2017, former
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe reported
that there were 36,000 unfilled cybersecurity
jobs in the commonwealth, and the Governor
went as far as signing a bill establishing
Computer Science as part of the core curriculum
for K-12 in every school in Virginia making
it the first state to ever make this change. In
Virginia today, there are over 50,000 cybersecurity
jobs openings. Although cybersecurity
offers attractive salaries that range from
$80,000 a year or more, this is compelling evidence
that education is what can fill those
empty positions. One of the first steps to introducing
educational programs is by securing
funding and thorough research.
Dr. Wu says his involvement with CIPHER
started when he and his multidisciplinary team
of researchers secured funding through the
National Science Foundation (NSF). “The program
was a great opportunity to build an inclusive
community for future cybersecurity workforce,
so we developed a proposal which was
selected by the NSF for funding.”
With a $100,000 grant from the NSF, the collaborative
team of faculty researchers were
able to determine key issues to address as
they plan to implement cybersecurity into
K-16 curricula. However, securing the funding
is only the beginning, while the real challenge
is addressing implementation, inclusivity, and
building a solid cybersecurity curriculum.
CIPHER’S project manager, Dr. Karen Sanzo
brings a fresh perspective, with a background
in K-12 education leadership. Dr. Sanzo says
her involvement in the project began through
a two-year fellow position.
“I came on board to this project through
work I did as a fellow for design thinking and
strategic planning that I concluded last year,”
Sanzo said, “And through that work I had the
opportunity to be engaged in the tech talent
pipeline work with computer science and computer
engineering, and through there I became
connected with cybersecurity.
As a former school administrator, Dr. Sanzo
has a unique background in education that
allows her to serve as the project’s K-12 liaison.
CIPHER has reportedly collaborated with
over 175,000 students from ten different local
school districts and faculty from dozens of universities
through a series of working group activities
which include organizing work meetings
and forming task forces to address different
facets of the project.
“When we launched the project in the
summer, we had over thirty partners. I reached
out and I asked our partners if they would like
to be on one of these task forces. There were
originally five, but we’ve condensed them
to four. When we had our first organizational
meeting for each team, I organized those
meetings while also leading colleagues in those
teams who have volunteered to co-lead those
taskforces.”
Dr. Sanzo helps coordinate these meetings,
but she says the goal is to encourage the partners
to drive the conversations as stakeholders.
To do this, Sanzo says they use what is called
a network improvement community (NIC)
where each team’s findings are reported back
to a larger network for discussion and deeper
understanding.
“We’re using what’s called network improvement
community to collaborate in different
components of the project, said Dr. Sanzo. “We
have leads that lead back to the hub. When we
learn about what’s happening in each of the
teams, we take those collective learnings to
meet the goal outlines of the project and set
high level objectives. And every three weeks,
the plan is to come back and talk about the
outcomes of what we’ve done to meet objectives.
We also talk about how we can advance
the work further.”
When it comes to the future of CIPHER and
the potential impact it could make on the community
locally and nationally, Dr. Sanzo says
one of the program’s goals would be to establish
a regional consortium where the team can
collaborate with and help K-12 partners connect
around cybersecurity to create resources
for school divisions to engage in research
around common problems and address the
lack of clarity around what cybersecurity is.
“We see a lot of different messages around
cybersecurity from external sources. We’re
working to align a common understanding of
cybersecurity, because that is too a barrier,
so I think it’s a matter of education,” said Dr.
Sanzo.
Dr. Wu also believes that among many challenges,
there are three key issues that the
program faces now. “There are challenges in
implementation,” said Dr. Wu, “Where do we
fit cybersecurity into the K-12 curricula? How
do we ensure time allocation? How do we
ensure resources and infrastructure in different
schools? There also challenges in student
access. How do we ensure students with different
socioeconomic status (SES) to have equal
access to curricula, teachers, resources, and infrastructure
needed for cybersecurity education?
And lastly, there are challenges in teacher
preparation. How do we ensure teachers have
access to solid cybersecurity curriculum and
learning sources? How do we prepare competent
teachers to have sufficient knowledge to
teach learning modules and increase students’
interest in cybersecurity?”
Dr. Wu states the main goal for CIPHER is to
pave the way for a national alliance between
universities, students, faculty, and researchers
through a “research-practitioner partnership
that engages all stakeholders.”
With this amount of progress made, many
local parents could see cybersecurity curriculum
in their child’s [virtual] classroom very
soon. A career in cybersecurity is not just rewarding
for the salary; it is about forging a
path in a demanding new field that desperately
needs a workforce to protect the network
we all share online.
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