The Cybersecurity Ambassador Program provides professional skills training for emerging cybersecurity professionals remotely. The goal is to reach out to underrepresented populations who may use Federal Work-Study (FWS) or grant sponsored internships to participate. Cybersecurity Ambassadors (CAs) develop skills that will serve them well as…

There is an ever-pressing need for cybersecurity awareness and implementation of learning strategies in the workplace to mitigate the increased threat posed by cyber-attacks and exacerbated by an untrained workforce. The lack of cybersecurity knowledge amongst government employees has increased to critical levels due to the amount of sensitive…

Private-sector and public-sector organizations have increasingly built specific business units for securing company assets, reputation, and lives, known as "security operations centers" (SOCs). Depending on the organization, these centers may also be referred to as global security operations centers, "cybersecurity" operations…

Many districts struggle to access the cybersecurity expertise or other resources needed to secure their networks and data appropriately. This isn't because mitigation strategies don't exist. Often, the barrage of suggestions and warnings directed at school IT leaders are too overwhelming to navigate, are not properly scoped for educational…

The purpose of this document is to provide timely and useful best practice information to help education agencies proactively prepare for, appropriately mitigate, and responsibly recover from a cybersecurity incident. This resource reflects lessons learned by the education community and provides recommendations that will help agencies protect…

Cybersecurity workers protect crucial information across the industry spectrum, from health records to bank accounts to sensitive military communications. A massive shortage of skilled technical employees in the U.S. has put the nation's digital privacy and infrastructure at risk, observers say, leading more community colleges to include…

Cybersecurity has emerged as one of the most critical issues confronting schools in the 21st century. Computer security is an essential instrument for protecting children, but K-12 schools are considered one of the most attractive targets for data privacy crimes often due to the less-than-effective cybersecurity practices in schools. The human…

Rationale: Former President Barack Obama's $3.9 trillion for the 2015 fiscal year budget request included a $2.9 billion investment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education. Research then showed that the national spending for cybersecurity has exceeded $10.7 billion in the 2015 fiscal year. Nonetheless, the number of…

In mid-July 2020, the social media site Twitter had over 100 of its most prominent user accounts start to tweet requests to send Bitcoin to specified Bitcoin wallets. The requests promised that the Bitcoin senders would receive their money back doubled, as a gesture of charity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The attack appears to have been carried…

There is an increasing trend in cloud adoption of enterprise applications in, for example, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. Such applications are routinely subject to targeted cyberattacks, which result in significant loss of sensitive data (e.g., due to data exfiltration in advanced persistent threats) or valuable utilities (e.g., due to…

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of schools across the nation, many K-12 schools moved from in-person to remote education, increasing their dependence on IT and making them potentially more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Education Facilities, including K-12 schools, is one of the nation's critical infrastructure subsectors. Several…

Equipping today's children with 21st century skills for the digital age requires turning traditional classrooms into a digital-learning ecosystem and ensuring teachers have professional skills and unfettered access to tools they need for 21st century teaching and learning. School district networks are being used for instruction, business, and…

As both the frequency and the severity of network breaches have increased in recent years, it is essential that cybersecurity is incorporated into the core of business operations. Evidence from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) indicates that there is, and will continue to be, a severe shortage of cybersecurity…

The goal of this research is to describe an active learning opportunity that was conducted as a community service offering through our Center for Cybersecurity Education and Applied Research (CCEAR). As a secondary goal, the participants sought to gain real world experience by applying techniques and concepts studied in security classes. A local…

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education published revised guidelines for emergency response planning for colleges and universities in the United States. These guidelines reflect the collective work of numerous government intelligence, law enforcement, and preparedness agencies that have taken into account the past successes and failures of…