This proposal offers to teams Mississippi State University?s (MSU) Southeast Region Regional Forensics Training Center and its Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection with collaborators at Auburn University and Tuskegee University to provide tactical level occupational training to America?s veterans by collaborating with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and offering no-cost training at or near VA hospitals. The proposal requests funding to support the enhancement of an existing digital forensics curriculum and then eventually installing it within the Veterans Administration system nation-wide. The proposal addresses a recognized and documented workforce need for skilled cyber infrastructure employees and offers to address this need by training a diverse community. The proposal builds on the combined capabilities of MSU, Auburn, and Tuskegee. MSU and Auburn are both National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE/IAE) and Tuskegee is currently pursuing that certification. The proposal integrates research into its training offering and strongly leverages an existing successful training initiative.
Under this project, Tuskegee University (TU) collaborated with Mississippi State University (MSU) and Auburn University (AU) to offer no-cost computer forensics training courses to America’s veterans. While MSU and AU conducted the most of training courses, TU provided necessary assists in the project, including course development, instruction, and assessments. Other then offering computer forensics courses, we also conducted related activities in research, Curriculum development and outreach. While the field of digital forensics is relatively new within computing sciences and justice programs and has many research challenges associated with it – practitioners are applying the limited tool sets available today in civil, criminal, and private investigations. At TU, four faculty members and four undergraduate students involved in computer forensics research. Our primary interest is to use General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit (GPGPU) in forensics applications to speed up the investigation process. The other are of interest is the network forensics analysis. Our student conducted research in unveiling information in the Private Browsing Session on major browsers. Several paper in these areas were published in conference proceedings. In terms of curriculum development, TU developed and offered two forensics related courses: Computer Forensics, and Mobile Device Forensics. Along with other existing information Assurance (IA) courses, TU has developed eight IA courses, four of the courses were offered regularly. With the enhanced curriculum in IA, we are proposing a new B.S. program in Information Technology (IT), where IA is a major track; and a Master program in Information System and Security Management (MSISSM). Both programs are pending for SACS approval. TU also involved a number of outreach activities: assisting in offering no-cost computer forensics training courses to America’s veterans, performed assessment, and conducted boot camps and summer camps at TU. AU and TU are just 15 miles away, and these universities worked very closely. TU assisted AU to conduct a survey of the students (veterans) of the forensics training courses. The results of the survey indicate that more than 80% of the participants feel the training courses are "Good" or "Outstanding". TU also conducted three one-day Technology Boot camps, and two one-week CSI summer camps. The camps greatly promoted the students’ interest in the area of computer science. With the help of this project and other NSF grants. TU has successfully strength it capability in IA research, teaching, and outreach. As a results. TU has been designated as the National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE.IAE) by National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June 2012.
