The Evidence Based Cybersecurity Training and Mentorship Program for Students (EBCS-TMPS) leverages an existing cyberinfrastructure to prepare students to become effective cybersecurity and law enforcement researchers. Through this program, students are exposed to theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and hands-on experience that are most sought by governmental, industrial and law enforcement organizations. This is accomplished using a standalone cyberinfrastructure created and maintained by researchers and practitioners in the Evidence Based Cybersecurity Research group in Georgia State University that enables the production of evidence-based cybersecurity research and supports the training of cybercrime researchers. Among ultimate benefits are improved cybersecurity and a more secure and crime-free online environment.
The EBCS-TMPS engages academics and practicing cybersecurity professionals as co-creators of research outcomes. During a two-months-long summer workshop, existing and strong academic-industry-law-enforcement partnerships are leveraged to train 30 undergraduate and graduate students in the deployment of better scientific efforts aimed at advancing CI-enabled and reliable research. The training program implements a wide range of activities to deliver key methodological and technical skills that are necessary for developing a cost effective cybersecurity posture for organizations (for industry track students), as well as for enforcing policies and laws aimed at disrupting online criminal activities in an effective manner (for both industry and law enforcement tracks). The interdisciplinary team of educators (composed of Criminology, Computer Science and Computer Information System scholars) supports students? development of knowledge in cybersecurity areas such as gathering and preserving evidence, implementing effective security policies, and technical aspects of security. The industry and law enforcement mentors support both the development of an industry-relevant curriculum for the EBCS-TMPS, and guided internships with their teams.
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.
