College of Science and Technology

Outreach Efforts in Computer Security:
@ DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The Scare, Prepare and Dare Project

Funded by the National Security Agency (NSA) MEPP grants: 98230-14-01 and  98230-13-01-0158


About


Dual Enrollment Course Syllabus and Lectures


Capture The Flag Contest

 
Join Us!

 
Current Project Partners

                               

About

Problem: Social media and smartphones attract young people like magnets. They also attract cyber criminals.

Our goal: Create responsible cyber-citizens of the future and among some of them spark passion to pursue a major in computer science or related fields.

Challenges the project will address: Working with local and regional high school faculty, it has become apparent that there are several challenges to accomplishing these goals:  lack of resources at the high schools (educational material, hardware, and software); lack of faculty expertise in cyber-security; lack of opportunity to practice and assess cyber-security competencies.  Four strategies are being employed to overcome these challenges:
  • Conduct online and on-site workshops for faculty
  • Conduct joint cyber-defense exercise
  • Develop a dual-enrolled course that is online and asynhronous.


Our approach:
In addition to the several efforts to introduce cyber security to high school students in K12, there are other efforts at community colleges to introduce cyber security (e.g., Cyberwatch). Most of these efforts are fairly comprehensive involving a rigorous curriculum in CISCO networking and security. However, most of these efforts are aimed at students who are already interested in cyber security. We are different in the following ways

  • The project is not only for the highly motivated high school students but also for those who may have not considered STEM as a field of study before.
  • Security topics are covered around a theme to which high school students can relate. Based on feedback from high school teacher’s, cyber-security education is built around the theme of social media.
  • This project provides teachers with an incentive to incorporate cyber-security into their curriculum by providing them not only with all of the necessary teaching and lab materials, but also access to all of the needed hardware and software infrastructure. This reduces preparation time, shortens the learning curve, and reduces the need for costly hardware and software



Join Us!

If you are  a community college or a high school or a Governor's School, you can join us as a co-collaborator in:
  • Offering the course to your students yourself -- we will provide all the course material and access to remote labs free of charge!
  • Offering the course to your students through Radford University (this is an option for schools in the state of Virginia, looking for dual enrollment courses). A MOU will have to be signed and the course will be offered for free from Radford University to your students (your students may have to pay for any textbooks as well as any fees/tuition that your school charges).
  • Offer to help us edit or modify our syllabus. The material is all open-source and we invite comments.

 Phase 1 of this project, funded by the NSA (NSA MEPP Grant# H98230-13-1-0158), was completed in May of 2014. Currently we are working on Phase 2 of the project (also funded by the NSA).



Project Partners


Southwest Virginia Governor's School
Shenandoah Valley Governor's School
Piedmont Governor's School
About Participate Agenda Personnel Contact


Funded by NSA MEPP grants:
98230-14-01 and
98230-13-01-0158