Cybersecurity

Two CU Boulder students earn scholarships for women in cybersecurity

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 15:12:46 +0000

Two CU Boulder students earn scholarships for women in cybersecurity Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/27/2019 - 09:12

Senior Stacy Hayes (left) and graduate student Jennifer Peyrot (right) are the college's newest cyberscholars.

Two College of Engineering and Applied Science students have received Scholarships for Women Studying Information Security.

Undergraduate Stacy Hayes and graduate student Jen Peyrot have both received a prestigious SWSIS award — only 16 were given out this year — that grants at least $5,000 to each winner. “It’s unusual for a university to have more than one student recipient of this national award in a given year,” said Dan Massey, director of the Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy program. “We have many women expressing interest in cybersecurity at the college, and to have two of our students recognized in this way shows the caliber of work they are producing.”

Drawn to national defense

Hayes is a senior studying computer science, where she is also pursuing a business minor. She is president of the CU Boulder Tau Beta Pi chapter and is actively involved in Women in Computing.

Originally planning to get a business degree, Hayes made a last-minute decision to apply to engineering school instead. “I always liked math,” said Hayes, “and a friend told me I’d be a great engineer. Now she gets to say ‘I told you so.’”

“With my dedication to help protect the nation, I recognize that my understanding of information security concepts is crucial so that I may be part of preventing further breaches. The safety and security of this country remains of the utmost importance and I want to dedicate my life to being part of the solution.” - Stacy Hayes

She discovered a strong aptitude for coding and fell in love with computer science, but after exploring possible career paths she might take with her degree, they all came up short for her.

“None of them seemed to fulfill my desire to contribute back to society,” Hayes said. “My search led me to national defense, where I could make a bigger impact.”

She is attracted to cybersecurity because it is a constantly evolving field that, as she says, will never be fully figured out. Hayes has interned for two summers in software development at Lockheed Martin, where she participated on teams with a broad range of security expertise. She hopes to work there after graduation and contribute to protecting national security.

From the Army to the classroom

Shortly after signing up for her first cybersecurity course, Peyrot decided to pursue a Master’s of Science in Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy. She wasn’t completely new to the subject, however, having previously served as a signals intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army.

“When I was in the Army, I was a codebreaker, which is really data security, but people didn’t call it that back then,” Peyrot said.

After the Army, she became a teacher and then an instructional technology coordinator in the St. Vrain Valley School District. In 2017, she organized a GenCyber camp with some advice and guidance from Massey. She began supporting teachers who were piloting cybersecurity education in the classroom and quickly became the point person for cybersecurity in the whole district.

“Even if students don’t go into the field of cybersecurity, they can bring that perspective into their business, and they can realize that this is part of everyday life and something that everyone needs to consider.” - Jennifer Peyrot

“Even if students don’t go into the field of cybersecurity, they can bring that perspective into their business, and they can realize that this is part of everyday life and something that everyone needs to consider,” said Peyrot.

The district is especially supportive of cyber education because there are so many cybersecurity firms in the area. Peyrot is engaged in developing partnerships with these companies to give students an opportunity to practice what they learn and see if this might be a career path for them.

She plans to continue her role in the school district while pursuing her master’s at CU Boulder. She noted that, as a teacher, the scholarship was essential for her to be able to afford graduate school.

Undergraduate Stacy Hayes and graduate student Jen Peyrot have both received a prestigious SWSIS award — only 16 were given out this year — that grants at least $5,000 to each winner.

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Students compete in national Hacking for Defense contest

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 21:06:18 +0000

Students compete in national Hacking for Defense contest Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/19/2019 - 15:06

Trevor Stanley

From left, team members included Trevor Stanley, Chris Coffey, Will Shand, Cory Cranford and Gerano Montoya.

CU Boulder students were among only six universities invited to present an innovative network security concept in June as part of Starts H4D, a pitch competition for cutting-edge national security solutions.

The group presented at Founders Fund, a leading venture capital firm in San Francisco, alongside teams from Stanford, University of Southern California and Duke on projects ranging from image recognition of drones, GPS jammer detection, innovative learning platforms and IoT security.

The CU Boulder team included computer science graduate student Trevor Stanley, Leeds School of Business student Chris Coffey, applied mathematics master’s student Will Shand, Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy program master’s student Cory Cranford, and mechanical engineering master’s student Gerano Montoya.

Their team, CharIoT (Characterizing the Internet of Things), developed a new machine learning approach for identifying different kinds of internet-enabled devices on a network.

Here, Trevor Stanley shares his takeaways from the class and competition:

The national Hacking for Defense program, sponsored by the National Security Innovation Network, was renamed Designing for Defense at CU Boulder because of the emphasis our mentors placed on understanding first principles, making sense of extremely ambiguous and at times complex problems, and creating original solutions.

I participated in a hackathon hosted by NSIN (formerly called MD5) last year and immediately applied for next year’s Designing for Defense course. I specifically set out to expand my knowledge and experiences through the course and felt empowered to take leadership on developing a solution to a real-world problem given to our team by the National Security Agency.

Our inclusive team of computer science students, applied math students and business students was committed to developing an effective and innovative solution for characterizing Internet of Things device traffic on a network, which could become invaluable for protecting military and healthcare networks.

Effective teamwork and communication was the biggest challenge and resource for our team. Over the semester our team dynamic and collective understanding of the NSA’s problem evolved. Helping the technical students and the business students communicate effectively with one another was incredibly rewarding for me personally, as I was able to draw on the skills I had developed while working on the Technology to Market team in my research group.

As a team, we were able to further develop our ability to respectfully debate, challenge each other’s opinions, communicate, collaborate, and effectively execute on work that was essential to our mission. For instance, our team was the only one among the other seven that raised $700 in seed funding, formed a company, created over 80 datasets, and conducted over 80 interviews with industry and government experts.

After winning the final competition between other CU Boulder teams working with various Department of Defense sponsors, our team decided to continue our project beyond the classroom.

We applied for the national Hacking for Defense competition, Starts H4D, co-sponsored by Founders Fund and NSIN in the heart of Silicon Valley.

I was humbled and inspired by the innovative solutions developed by the other teams and shared in the collective zeal for civilian service. CharIoT is a truly unique opportunity to continue adding value to the defense community as civilians, and we’ll continue this form of national service by utilizing the resources we gained from Starts H4D to further develop our IoT security solution.

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CU Boulder is top producer in national cybersecurity competition

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:21:44 +0000

CU Boulder is top producer in national cybersecurity competition Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/25/2019 - 13:21

Nearly 13,000 college students across America took part in the first stage of 2019 Cyber FastTack competition during April, solving a series of increasingly difficult cybersecurity challenges to demonstrate their aptitude for cybersecurity careers.

Based on their success, 2,400 of those students – including 24 from the �鶹��Ƶ – received invitations to take part in the second round. In fact, CU Boulder produced the most first-stage qualifiers in Colorado and ranked No. 14 in the nation.

Students are now competing in the second stage for $2.5 million in scholarships for college tuition and advanced cybersecurity training, as well as for recognition for themselves and their colleges.

“It’s great to be ranked first in the state and we’re proud of our 24 students who have advanced to the second stage,” said Dan Massey, director of Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy (TCP) and professor of computer science. “This is another indicator of the growing interest in the field which our recently launched cybersecurity program addresses.”

Sponsored by governors in 25 states, the program trains students in critical skills while they compete for scholarships

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