海角社区 Cybersecurity Offerings, Capabilities to Expand With FIREStarter 2
June 6, 2022
BATON ROUGE, LA 鈥� Last fall, 海角社区 announced a new initiative named FIREStarter, which would provide students with training in cybersecurity and threat analysis through the creation of a lab for cyber range exercises. These exercises would be conducted in partnership with Louisiana State Police and industry to simulate real-time cyberattacks on large-scale enterprise and control systems.
A new grant of approximately $350,000 from the Louisiana Board of Regents Cybersecurity Talent Initiative Fund鈥攚ith a future $100,000 match from BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world and a leader in sustainability and processing technology鈥攚ill help build on last year鈥檚 announcement by establishing the FIREStarter 2 laboratory. More specifically, the grant will fund digital forensics and industrial control systems hardware and software and allow 海角社区 to expand its hands-on applied cybersecurity courses, as well as support research into and collaboration with BASF in industrial control systems security.
鈥淔IREStarter 2 is basically all hands-on [experience],鈥� said 海角社区 Computer Science Professor Golden Richard III, principal investigator on the project and director of the Applied Cybersecurity Lab at 海角社区. 鈥淲e will be putting the same software and hardware components in the lab that digital forensics practitioners use on a day-to-day basis to work real cases. It鈥檚 our anticipation that every student in the cybersecurity concentration, plus any other interested computer science students [and possibly more from other disciplines], will have the opportunity to be exposed to state-of-the-art hardware and software tools for digital forensics and industrial control systems.
鈥淔rom the industrial control systems [side], we will have both equipment for teaching students the basics of programming PLCs, as well as small-scale 鈥榮imulations鈥� of real industrial control systems, e.g., a water-treatment plant, power plant, etc. These are really cool and on roll-away carts, with the real hardware tucked inside. This means that you can formulate real attacks and defenses and see if they work.
Richard is joined on the project by co-PIs Gerald Baumgartner, associate professor of computer science; Nash Mahmoud, associate professor of computer science; Juana Moreno, professor of physics; and Fernando Alegre, associate director of the 海角社区 Gordon A. Cain Center for STEM Literacy.
The FIREStarter 2 grant comes on the heels of 海角社区 President William Tate IV鈥檚 announcement of his Scholarship First Agenda, which includes five strategic priorities that will help elevate 海角社区 and Louisiana to the benefit of everyone. One of those includes defense and cybersecurity and the role 海角社区 will play in being a leader in both.
Richard said this new initiative is part of that larger goal and will develop homegrown talent that will ultimately help enrich and secure the state.
鈥淟ouisiana is loaded with industrial control systems鈥攃hemical, petroleum, et. al,鈥� he said. 鈥淭eaching students to defend these systems, and ultimately creating a local workforce that can tackle this challenge, is practically a no-brainer if the resources are available to do it. And now they are. From a digital forensics standpoint, there are virtually no digital forensics firms left in Louisiana. All the practitioners have been slurped up by bigger firms. We鈥檇 like to change that and repopulate Louisiana with brilliant digital forensics practitioners.鈥�
Looking past the FIREStarter 2 project, Richard and Andrew Case, senior cybersecurity consultant in the 海角社区 Applied Cybersecurity Lab, will soon be representing 海角社区 on one of the biggest cybersecurity stages in the country when they present at this year鈥檚 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. They will be joined by Gustavo Moreira and Austin Sellers and will be presenting on 鈥淣ew Memory Forensics Techniques to Defeat Device Monitoring Malware.鈥�
It鈥檚 the second-straight year for Richard and Case to deliver a talk at the conference. In 2021, they delivered a presentation on 鈥淔ixing a Memory Forensics Blind Spot: Linux Kernel Tracing.鈥�
鈥満＝巧缜�檚 applied cybersecurity program produces the best memory forensics research in the world,鈥� Richard said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 one of our primary strengths, and both Black Hat talks present(ed) cutting-edge memory forensics work aimed at detecting stealthy malware. Presenting at Black Hat provides amazing exposure for the program, as the conference is attended by thousands of cybersecurity professionals from academia, industry, and government.鈥�
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Contact: Joshua Duplechain
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