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.
