NSF Award
2321055
Critical energy and chemical infrastructures increasingly rely on integrating information technologies (IT) into operational technology (OT) for data analysis, automation, and remote operation. Despite recent advancement, the infrastructures continue to be prone to cyber-attacks. Managing vulnerabilities within OT environments is very different from that for IT. The project team at Lamar University aims to address these vulnerabilities. The team includes Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, and Criminal Justice faculty, and proposes to develop an interdisciplinary cybersecurity educational program to support the workforce needs of critical energy and chemical infrastructure. This project will generate knowledge- and practice-oriented contents that the higher education community can immediately utilize. The program will build the foundation for students to understand key issues associated with industrial cybersecurity, develop cyber-risk management strategies, build the capacity to facilitate business continuity, and formulate disaster recovery plans.<br/><br/>The goal of this project is to transform the state of industrial cybersecurity research workforce preparedness for the energy and chemical industry and broaden cybersecurity education in engineering degree plans to support critical infrastructures. Students will undertake research in maintaining operational cybersecurity; data protection strategies and “Defense in Depth”; cybersecurity incident response planning; and remote access to IT and OT Systems. This project integrates research and education of IT and OT technologies within the context of the three pillars of cybersecurity: people, technology, and process. The project team will develop a new course with a cohesive series of course modules for integration into traditional chemical engineering curriculums; develop active case studies for chemical engineering, computer science and criminal justice curriculums; and broaden student participation through games, tabletop exercises, workshops, seminars and partnerships with energy and chemical industry, cybersecurity industry, and related organizations. The target audience are undergraduate and graduate students from chemical engineering, computer science, and criminal justice, who will be trained to lead energy and chemical industries in addressing cybersecurity problems. The team anticipates that the project will directly engage a diverse group of students given the demographic background of current enrollees in the host institution. The outcomes of this project will be broadly disseminated through various channels as well as the ACCESS program.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
