Security Awareness, Education, and Training

How do we educate users, producers, designers, and purchasers of IT to choose wisely when it comes to security? CERIAS personnel examine issues of awareness methods, on-line security education, security certification issues, security curriculum design, the role of K-12 education, risk communication, community awareness and standards, cross-cultural issues of security, organizational structure and communication of risk, and public perceptions of IT security.

C4ISR Testbed Support for Muscatatuck Urban Warfare

Principal Investigator: Ed Coyle, David Ebert, Ahmed Elmagarmid, Jim Goldman, et. al.

Purdue Univ. Program for Homeland Security - STEM Career Development

Principal Investigator: Sandra Amass, David Ebert

Seed: Developing Instructional Laboratories for Computer Security Information

Principal Investigator: Gene Spafford

Community Based Cyber Security Project

Principal Investigator: Marc Rogers

Training Knowledge & Skills for the Networked Battlefield

Principal Investigator: Bob Proctor

Rural Law Enforcement Technology Center

Principal Investigator: Marc Rogers

Information Assurance and Security Curriculum and Faculty Development

Principal Investigator: Phil Rawles

National Plant Diagnostic Network

Principal Investigator: Keith Watson

The National Plant Diagnostic Network is part of a United States national plant biosecurity program established by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June 2002. The NPDN is part of an early warning system for plant pests and disease outbreaks. State departments of agriculture and the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) rely on the Network to provide early detection and preliminary diagnoses. The Network consists of five regional Network centers and one national database facility. Each NPDN center is located at a land grant university in strategically chosen locations around the US. The regional centers are located at Cornell University (Northeast Region; Ithaca, New York), Kansas State University (Great Plains Region; Manhattan, Kansas), Michigan State University (North Central Region; East Lansing, Michigan), the University of California at Davis (Western Region; Davis, California), and the University of Florida (Southern Region; Gainesville, Florida). The national database is located at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). These regional centers provide information technology infrastructure and Internet-based applications for plant diagnostic laboratories in their region. The national database is the central repository for NPDN data.

CERIAS provides information security consulting support to the NPDN. Since January 2004, site security assessments, system administrator training, and diagnostician security awareness efforts have been performed. Based on these efforts, the USDA provided funds specifically for additional information security projects throughout the regional centers. These funds were used to create an information security training and awareness web site for all members of the NPDN as well as a network of automated vulnerability scanning systems deployed at most of the regional centers.