- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock to host Women in Cybersecurity Virtual Event

John Hill — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 16:36:08 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Emerging Analytics Center is teaming up with Girls of Promise and the Museum of Discovery to host a Women in Cybersecurity virtual event from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, to celebrate Cybersecurity Awareness Month and International Day of the Girl. The event will give girls a chance to learn what it’s like to choose a career in cybersecurity. The event, recommended for girls in sixth grade and older, will feature a panel of female mentors working in cybersecurity as well as a mobile forensics workout via ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Cyber Gym. The panelists include Becky Passmore, senior digital forensic examiner and computer forensics instructor with the federal government; Valerie Moring, healthcare and cybersecurity lead at Edafio Technology Partners; Lora McIntosh, chief information security officer at Simmons Bank; and Beth-Anne Bygum, chief security and compliance officer at Acxiom. Representatives from Arvest Bank, Simmons Bank, Forge Institute, Virtual Arkansas, the Women’s Foundation, and the Museum of Discovery will facilitate the Cyber Gym workout. “With the ongoing growing need for cybersecurity professionals,” said Sandra Leiterman, managing director of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Cyber Gym. “It’s important to encourage girls to get interested in it and any kind of science at an early age. Traditionally, women are underrepresented in the computer sciences. The panelists will talk about their road to cybersecurity, what they do in their careers, and their schooling and training. During the second hour of the event, we will lead them through a real-life mobile forensics workout. We really want to show these girls how exciting a career in cybersecurity can be.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock receives NSF grant to host free virtual cybersecurity camp

John Hill — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 21:43:11 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received a grant from the National Science Foundation that will allow students in grades 7-12 to attend a virtual cybersecurity summer camp in July for free. The camp is held in partnership with Virtual Arkansas and the . They will host four sessions from 9-11:30 a.m. and 1-3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday on July 6-9 and July 13-16. The afternoon camp from July 6-9 is full, but registration is available for the other three sessions. “The camp will cover topics such as ransomware, mobile forensics, firewalls, and how to detect a cyberattack and what to do about it,” said Sandra Leiterman, managing director of the Cyber Gym. “Each day, we’ll have a guest speaker who will talk about cybersecurity careers in areas like information technology, government, and the FBI.” Guest speakers will include Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, a member of the FBI’s mobile forensics team, a cybersecurity director for an Arkansas government agency, and a chief information security officer. The camp will end with a hackathon where students will show off the skills they learned throughout the week. In order to participate, students will need a computer with reliable internet access, a school-affiliated email address, a headset with a built-in microphone, and a webcam. The grant from the National Science Foundation also provides funding for the Cyber Gym to enhance undergraduate cybersecurity curriculum with security content, improve recruitment and retention of computer science and information technology students in the cybersecurity workforce, enhance faculty expertise in security competitions and skills, and increase students’ knowledge and skills in cybersecurity. For more information and to register,��.

��Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education

Ajani Oyindamola — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 18:28:49 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will help create a free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students as part of a new partnership announced Dec. 9 at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s College of Engineering and Information Technology.�� The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science will partner with ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative’s Virtual Arkansas division, and the University of Central Arkansas to develop a three-year cybersecurity curriculum and course pathway. This curriculum, which is set to begin in the 2020-21 school year, will support teachers and students through increasingly rigorous and relevant cybersecurity concepts leading to more Arkansas students being prepared for industry recognized certifications and to enter post-secondary cybersecurity programs. To support this partnership, ADE is providing $94,500. The grant is part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s coding initiative, which is funded with a $2.5 million annual commitment by the Arkansas State Legislature. “Once again, Arkansas’s educational institutions are demonstrating their commitment to providing our students with high quality educational opportunities that will prepare them for the job market they will soon be entering into,” Gov. Hutchinson said. “As our state moves forward in our computer science and computing initiative, we will remain focused on preparing our students for the high paying and open career opportunities that are out there like those in cybersecurity.” Arch Ford Education Service cooperative will subgrant $25,000 to the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Department of Computer Science and the Emerging Analytics Center to facilitate CyberGym existing module expansion and refinement and new module development as approved by the ADE Office of Computer Science.�� Vlog��ý Little Rock’s new CyberGym, an education and simulation model laboratory for cybersecurity learning hosted on the cloud, will provide educational materials for the first two years of the high school cybersecurity classes. The third-year curriculum will be provided by UCA’s Cyber Range. “The CyberGym has been developed by the faculty in computer science along with the team in the Emerging Analytics Center as a set of modules on a broad range of cybersecurity concepts that school teachers and students can then access to enhance their classroom experience,” ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Chancellor Christina Drale said. “With our partners here today, we are providing for all Arkansas K-12 schools a curriculum pipeline in cybersecurity that will provide the skills students need to be prepared for industry recognized certifications and to be prepared to enter post-secondary cybersecurity programs. Preparing Arkansas students for the jobs of tomorrow provides unlimited pathways for their futures.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock faculty members and students now work in ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s CyberGym. Photo by Ben Krain.

Arch Ford will subgrant an additional $25,000 to the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Department of Computer Science and the Emerging Analytics Center to provide payments to qualified work-study students to provide technical support and content development to Arkansas educators accessing the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock CyberGym system. Dr. Albert Baker, interim chair of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Department of Computer Science, said that more cybersecurity students are needed to fill the state’s growing demand for this high-paying field. Average starting salaries for cybersecurity jobs run from $90,000 to $125,000. With nearly 5,000 cybersecurity jobs in Arkansas, there are more than 1,000 that remain unfilled, Baker said. The new cybersecurity curriculum will be comprised of at least three courses that will provide students instruction in fundamental computer science; introductory through advanced cyber security concepts; online cybersecurity CyberGym modules using the power of Google’s cloud computing services; cybersecurity analyst and specialist tools; and relevant industry identified skills and knowledge expected in the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.�� These courses will be aligned to the ADE Information Security, ADE Advanced Information Security, and National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) standards and will support the students completing the pathway in being prepared to take and pass at least one industry recognized higher level cyber security certification (I.E., CompTIA’s Networking Plus, CompTIA’s Security Plus, CompTIA CySA+) and other interim certifications (I.E., CompTIA’s A+, Microsoft Technology Associate certifications) as deemed appropriate and approved by the Arkansas Department of Education. The courses will also be aligned to the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework,a national-focused resource that categorizes and describes cybersecurity work. “The greatest cyber-threat to national security is K-12 education,” said Kevin Nolten, director of Academic Outreach for the Cyber Innovation Center and the National Integrated Cyber Education Research Center. “Our responsibility as a state and as educators is to align both standards and curricula to cyber-based workforce roles to ensure that students are graduating high school with not only an awareness of cyber but the knowledge, skills and abilities to close the workforce gap that exists in cyber.”�� The ADE Office of Computer Science will collaborate with Virtual Arkansas and an ADE Office of Computer Science approved team of curriculum writers to develop the curriculum, which will include all the resources needed for a beginning computer science teacher to appropriately instruct students in this high-quality content by Aug. 1, 2020.�� Virtual Arkansas will assign a teacher and provide all courses developed under this agreement through its digital delivery platform beginning in the 2020-21 school year. Virtual Arkansas will also provide this curriculum for all courses in “content only” format at no charge to the school, the teachers, or the students. Virtual Arkansas will update the virtually delivered and “content only” curriculum as necessary in accordance with the ADE Information Security and NICE standards.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock to host Women in Cybersecurity Virtual Event

����Vlog��ý Little Rock receives NSF grant to host free virtual cybersecurity camp

����Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock to host Women in Cybersecurity Virtual Event

��Vlog��ý Little Rock receives NSF grant to host free virtual cybersecurity camp

��Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education