This presentation presents the results of a project to create a virtual training environment designed to teach basic and advanced cybersecurity concepts as applied in an advanced manufacturing organization. The virtual training environment simulates a typical industrial cooling system complete with programmable logic controllers (PLC), electronic sensors, pumps, human machine interfaces (HMI) and open platform computing (OPC) servers. The virtual training environment is available for multiple hypervisor platforms and can be run locally by students at home or used remotely on a cloud hosted platform.
Engineering, Technology, Computer Science
Northwest St Com Coll
Advanced Technological Education (ATE)
Related Content for Cybersecurity for Advanced Manufacturing Organizations
Hello, this is a very interesting project. Are these materials available to anyone? If so, how do we access them? We are an ATE National Center (NCyTE) and would like to discuss with you further, thanks a lot.
Tony Hills
Lead Presenter Faculty
May 10, 2022 | 03:07 p.m.
All of the material is freely available. You can access it at https://www.nl.northweststate.edu/camo. If you are interested in evaluating the scenario labs and don’t want to download and setup the virtual environment locally send me an email at thills@northweststate.edu and I will setup a test account for you on our servers. We would like to see this used as much as possible so if you have any other questions just let me know.
Thank you for your feedback and for viewing the video!
Gerhard Salinger
Facilitator Former Program Officer
May 10, 2022 | 03:11 p.m.
Your project is important for technicians working in highly automated manufacturing companies. To what extent is industry involved in developing the scenarios? In what types of manufacturing industry find employment and what do they do there? I am a co-PI on an ATE-funded project to determine the mathematical competencies actually used by technicians in the manufacturing workplace by looking at scenarios of what they do. We would be interested in looking at your scenarios to understand the mathematical competencies being learned.
Tony Hills
Lead Presenter Faculty
May 11, 2022 | 06:17 a.m.
We have had industry involvement in our project since the beginning. We have a team of local industry partners who have met with us several times. We met with our partners to get approval and feedback on the initial scenario ideas. We met with them again when the scenarios were complete to get their opinion on the completed project and to listen to their ideas for improvement. We will meet with them again to share how the scenarios are working.
The scenarios have not yet been used enough to draw any conclusions on what industries our students will be hired in.
We do not specifically address math competencies in the scenarios but there may still be something in them of interest to you. You can view the scenarios at https://www.nl.northweststate.edu/camo.
This is truly a need for this type of program. We have been searching for an interesting and relevant way to introduce students in high school to cybersecurity. For the last two years we have tried two different approaches but neither has been completely successful in gaining student interest. I'm sure this will be. Thank you for posting the link to the scenario labs. Looking forward to researching this.
Tony Hills
Lead Presenter Faculty
May 11, 2022 | 06:18 a.m.
Thank you for the feedback. Feel free to send me an email if you have questions in the future.
Margie Vela
Facilitator CEO & President
May 10, 2022 | 11:25 p.m.
What a great project! Scenario training gives students real-life experience in a simulated circumstance. I always find this extremely helpful. There is nothing like understanding how one's decisions impact outcomes in simulated events- low stakes, valuable lessons! Are you able to measure the impact this type of training has on the students' decision-making? Also, how would you measure the impact on their performance in the workforce?
Great project!
Tony Hills
Lead Presenter Faculty
May 17, 2022 | 06:46 a.m.
Thank you for your feedback. We have just completed the scenarios and have not yet gathered any data on the impact it has on those who have completed the training.
Tim Podkul
Facilitator Senior Research Advisor
May 13, 2022 | 02:10 p.m.
Thank you for sharing this work, and congratulations! I am curious if there are other sectors that have shown interest, or you think might be interested, in potential partners. The energy sector, for example is one that comes to mind. I am also curious if this training is accompanied by any specific credential or certification. I could see this being very appealing to employers.
Tony Hills
Lead Presenter Faculty
May 17, 2022 | 06:45 a.m.
We currently have only approached manufacturing and education facilities with the scenarios since they are the most readily available in our region. We do believe that the training would be valuable to other sectors. The training is not tied to any specific credential or certification, but it would be a good idea for us to investigate doing that as we develop more scenarios.
Laurin Buchanan
Principal Investigator
May 17, 2022 | 02:59 p.m.
I am a former cybersecurity practitioner turned researcher and agree there is a critical need for cybersecurity education that is specific to the ICS environment. This is a very interesting project, thank you for sharing it here.
Tony, I'd like to suggest that you -and any other researchers here- consider continuing to disseminate your work by submitting to the Cybersecurity Skills Journal (CSJ), an international, peer-reviewed journal from the National CyberWatch Center Digital Press. CSJ publishes Special Issues that advance knowledge, practice, and capabilities of the cybersecurity workforce. The current Special Issue Call, Evidencing Competencies: Progress from Funded Research, seeks submissions arising from funded research about technology, tools, or techniques that impact cybersecurity practice, improve learning and advance the state of the cybersecurity workforce’s capability maturity.
The Journal’s unique, collaborative approach to publishing evidence-based research provides extensive support to authors. Initial submissions are simple and not require a completed draft manuscript. CSJ also publishes about work in progress, and planned research.
And for anyone not directly involved in sponsored research: we are also looking for people from diverse backgrounds to become peer reviewers - no prior reviewing experience necessary!
Full Disclosure: I am the (volunteer) Managing Editor of CSJ, and the outgoing co-chair of the NICE K12 Community of Interest.
Corrinne Sande
Hello, this is a very interesting project. Are these materials available to anyone? If so, how do we access them? We are an ATE National Center (NCyTE) and would like to discuss with you further, thanks a lot.
Tony Hills
Faculty
All of the material is freely available. You can access it at https://www.nl.northweststate.edu/camo. If you are interested in evaluating the scenario labs and don’t want to download and setup the virtual environment locally send me an email at thills@northweststate.edu and I will setup a test account for you on our servers. We would like to see this used as much as possible so if you have any other questions just let me know.
Michael Singletary
Neat project. Thanks for sharing your story.
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thank you for your feedback and for viewing the video!
Gerhard Salinger
Former Program Officer
Your project is important for technicians working in highly automated manufacturing companies. To what extent is industry involved in developing the scenarios? In what types of manufacturing industry find employment and what do they do there? I am a co-PI on an ATE-funded project to determine the mathematical competencies actually used by technicians in the manufacturing workplace by looking at scenarios of what they do. We would be interested in looking at your scenarios to understand the mathematical competencies being learned.
Tony Hills
Faculty
We have had industry involvement in our project since the beginning. We have a team of local industry partners who have met with us several times. We met with our partners to get approval and feedback on the initial scenario ideas. We met with them again when the scenarios were complete to get their opinion on the completed project and to listen to their ideas for improvement. We will meet with them again to share how the scenarios are working.
The scenarios have not yet been used enough to draw any conclusions on what industries our students will be hired in.
We do not specifically address math competencies in the scenarios but there may still be something in them of interest to you. You can view the scenarios at https://www.nl.northweststate.edu/camo.
Aileen Owens
This is truly a need for this type of program. We have been searching for an interesting and relevant way to introduce students in high school to cybersecurity. For the last two years we have tried two different approaches but neither has been completely successful in gaining student interest. I'm sure this will be. Thank you for posting the link to the scenario labs. Looking forward to researching this.
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thank you for the feedback. Feel free to send me an email if you have questions in the future.
Margie Vela
CEO & President
What a great project! Scenario training gives students real-life experience in a simulated circumstance. I always find this extremely helpful. There is nothing like understanding how one's decisions impact outcomes in simulated events- low stakes, valuable lessons! Are you able to measure the impact this type of training has on the students' decision-making? Also, how would you measure the impact on their performance in the workforce?
Great project!
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thank you for your feedback. We have just completed the scenarios and have not yet gathered any data on the impact it has on those who have completed the training.
Tim Podkul
Senior Research Advisor
Thank you for sharing this work, and congratulations! I am curious if there are other sectors that have shown interest, or you think might be interested, in potential partners. The energy sector, for example is one that comes to mind. I am also curious if this training is accompanied by any specific credential or certification. I could see this being very appealing to employers.
Tony Hills
Faculty
We currently have only approached manufacturing and education facilities with the scenarios since they are the most readily available in our region. We do believe that the training would be valuable to other sectors. The training is not tied to any specific credential or certification, but it would be a good idea for us to investigate doing that as we develop more scenarios.
Laurin Buchanan
I am a former cybersecurity practitioner turned researcher and agree there is a critical need for cybersecurity education that is specific to the ICS environment. This is a very interesting project, thank you for sharing it here.
Tony, I'd like to suggest that you -and any other researchers here- consider continuing to disseminate your work by submitting to the Cybersecurity Skills Journal (CSJ), an international, peer-reviewed journal from the National CyberWatch Center Digital Press. CSJ publishes Special Issues that advance knowledge, practice, and capabilities of the cybersecurity workforce. The current Special Issue Call, Evidencing Competencies: Progress from Funded Research, seeks submissions arising from funded research about technology, tools, or techniques that impact cybersecurity practice, improve learning and advance the state of the cybersecurity workforce’s capability maturity.
The Journal’s unique, collaborative approach to publishing evidence-based research provides extensive support to authors. Initial submissions are simple and not require a completed draft manuscript. CSJ also publishes about work in progress, and planned research.
And for anyone not directly involved in sponsored research: we are also looking for people from diverse backgrounds to become peer reviewers - no prior reviewing experience necessary!
Full Disclosure: I am the (volunteer) Managing Editor of CSJ, and the outgoing co-chair of the NICE K12 Community of Interest.
Laurin Buchanan, CISSP
Secure Decisions
laurin.buchanan@securedecisions.com
former STEMForAll Videohall presenter!
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it.
Gordon Jr
Very interesting and so important. Excellent!
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thank you for the feedback and for viewing our video!
Mohsin Jamali
Great idea and great project. Learning to secure our infrastructure via physical security.
Thanks for sharing it.
Tony Hills
Faculty
Thank you for the feedback and for viewing our video!
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.