Multiyear Collaboration Between the US Army and an ECE Program to Develop Student Skills in Cybersecurity of Cyber-Physical Systems
Virgilio González, Oscar Perez, Rodrigo A. Romero, Pilar González, Hector Erives-Contreras · 2024
This innovative practice full paper describes a collaboration to incorporate cybersecurity into an Electrical Engineering program. It is widely recognized that there is a need to educate the technical workforce to be prepared against cybersecurity threats. There is a growing recognition of the importance of Cybersecurity in various engineering fields, including Electrical Engineering (EE). However, including Cybersecurity in EE curricula may not be as prevalent or emphasized as in fields like Computer Science or Computer Engineering. For three years the ARMY - DEVCOM - Analysis Center at WSMR has collaborated with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The University of Texas at El Paso in a multifaceted series of efforts to increase the number of students capable of working on cybersecurity from the physical perspective. In addition, there is a general increase in awareness about vulnerabilities, attacks, and their countermeasures in system confidentiality, integrity, and availability in each cohort. There are four major efforts in the partnership. First, the entire capstone design cohort receives basic training to increase awareness of cybersecurity to be considered as part of the general requirements of all projects. Second, in each cohort, there is at least one team focusing on developing a system solution for a cybersecurity application, such as training devices or demonstration platforms in an unclassified setting. Third, the degree plans of the ECE bachelor's and master's degree programs have evolved to include formal elements of cybersecurity through several courses, including a cybersecurity track within Computer Engineering. Finally, concurrently with other efforts, a group of students is hired by the university to work as interns with the ARMY. In previous years, we presented initial results regarding the number of students who benefitted from these efforts as well as representative systems developed by students. To complete the assessment, we are working on a two-phased explanatory sequential mixed methods study using quantitative data and then explaining the quantitative results with in-depth qualitative data. The initial phase of the study collected quantitative data through surveys for several student cohorts. This will be followed by some interviews with selected individuals to probe or explain those results in more depth. Our initial hypothesis is that the different efforts should increase the number of students aware of cybersecurity considerations in engineering designs as well as their expertise level. Our next question to answer is which methods produce the best results in preparing the specialized workforce to deal with cybersecurity aspects of cyber-physical systems.