December 13, 2019
Cybersecurity is the most rapidly expanding field as more and more of our personal data becomes available online. The need to protect this data and thus protect Americans is the foundation for forming our new CyberGym program. Within the CyberGym, undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to participate in research at the forefront of the cybersecurity field. The CyberGym is made possible through a partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education and Google as well as through NSF grant funding. A $10,000 grant from Google for the online lab environment gives the university the ability to run 2,000 distinct classroom labs a month for six months. The CyberGym utilizes a safe and highly accessible cloud environment that deploys workouts for students to build their skills in cybersecurity applications. These resulting workouts are then shared with middle and high school students throughout the nation. Our student researchers continue to work to develop new competition-style cybersecurity workouts and find more effective techniques to distribute the content through cloud technologies.
Located in the Emerging Analytics Center, we also allow students to engage in applied cybersecurity research using 3D data visualization as well as developed machine learning applications to target risk reduction. With over $15 million in funding, students work right alongside government and industry partners to develop solutions to some of the the toughest challenges in cybersecurity. We are proud of the CyberGym and of the work the EAC has done alongside the Department of Computer Science to make this possible.
