Amid rising cyber attacks, UConn on Friday said it’s creating the school’s first-ever cybersecurity lab and curriculum in Storrs.
Connecticut’s flagship state university said the instructional lab is being backed by a $1 million donation from two alumni brothers, Samuel and Stephen Altschuler, who both graduated with electrical engineering degrees in the 1950s.
Billed as Altschuler Cyber Security Lab, the facility is expected to debut on the first floor of the school’s Information Technology Engineering Building this summer.
The lab will aim to train engineering students to become experts in cybersecurity through a “hands-on” course for computer science and engineering (CSE) freshmen, according to school officials. Other CSE undergraduate and graduate students will also be able to access the lab.
UConn’s CSE department has more than 800 undergraduate and 150 graduate students.
The freshmen curriculum is currently under development, but it will teach students about website security, secure configuration of networks and improving cybersecurity in software and hardware. The course work is also centered on the vulnerabilities of commercial tech and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, among other topics.
Arthur House, Connecticut’s first-ever cyber security risk officer, applauded the new curriculum as it makes UConn a contributor in the “effort to understand and counter evolving threats to the state’s government agencies, businesses and organizations.”
House has said he expects a major cyber attack on U.S. infrastructure in the near future, and that government agencies and industries aren’t doing enough to combat the influx of hackers.
In October, a study commissioned by specialty insurer Hartford Steam Boiler and Insurance Co. said almost 60 percent of 400-plus business executives polled reported an uptick in suspicious emails in 2017.
Those emails are often disguised as being from a senior manager or vendor seeking payments, and employees sometimes respond by transferring company funds.
UConn Health is one of the latest victims of an email hacking scheme in Connecticut, as an unauthorized third party in December accessed employee email accounts, potentially impacting the privacy of 326,000 patients and others, it announced recently.
