The Citadel Department of Defense (DOD) Cyber Institute (CDCI) hosted cadets, students and faculty from each of the six senior military college cyber institutes — The Citadel, Norwich University, Virginia Tech, University of North Georgia, Texas A&M and Virginia Military Institute – on April 3 and 4.

The purpose of the Cybersecurity Research Forum, or CyRF@C, was to provide undergraduates from each senior military college with a forum to present their cybersecurity-based research in several categories including malware and forensics, data analysis and threatcasting, cryptography, cyber warfare and Internet of Things security.

“The senior military college DoD Cyber Institutes are a great example of how six colleges and universities work together to prepare students for DoD Cyber Workforce. The research conference provides a platform for these cadets and students to present their research from the capstone projects related to cyber,” said Shankar Banik, Ph.D., director of The Citadel DoD Cyber Institute and the chair of CyRF@C program committee.

Additional conference chairs included professors from The Citadel Cyber and Computer Sciences Department — Deepti Joshi, Ph.D., Michael Verdicchio, Ph.D., and William Johnson, Ph.D.

The Citadel Present Gen. Glenn Walters, USMC (Ret.), ‘79 and Sally Selden, Ph.D., SPHR, provost and dean of the college, provided the welcome address on day one and Darin Zimmerman, Ph.D., dean of the Swain Family School of Science and Mathematics, provided the opening remarks on day two. In addition to the 20 presentations, the conference program included several keynote speakers and a panel discussion on the DoD cyber workforce.

The conference was funded by the National Security Agency under NCAE-C, or the National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, and the Senior Military College Cyber Grant program.

Keynote Speakers for Day One

• Maj. Gen. John H. Phillips, ’90, Military Deputy, US Army DCS G-6 & Director, Program Resource Integration HQDA-G6
• Neal Ziring, Technical Director, National Security Agency’s (NSA) Cybersecurity Directorate
• Rich Scalco, Senior Cyber Engineer, US Navy, NIWC Atlantic (Naval Information Warfare Center)

Keynote Speaker and Panel Members for Day Two

• Matthew Isnor, Branch Chief, DoD Cyberspace Workforce Development, US Department of Defense

Panel on DoD Cyber Workforce

• Ashley Greeley, NSA / National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C)
• Hank Osborne, NIWC Atlantic (Naval Information Warfare Center)
• Chief Warrant Officer Two Yolanda Surrency, US Army Cyber Command
• Danielle Phelps, US Army Cyber Command

Conference participants were also invited to attend social events at Charleston Marriott and The Citadel Beach House on Isle of Palms. 

At the conclusion of the conference, winners were announced in three categories — best paper, best presentation and best poster.

BEST PAPER AWARD: Sarah Lawhorn and Matthew Bovee (Norwich University), Memory Forensic Analysis of Web Browser-Integrated Password Managers

BEST POSTER AWARD: Grayson Clark (University of North Georgia), NetHunter: On the Go Penetration Testing

BEST POSTER AWARD: Dominick Lalena (Virginia Military Institute), Enterprise Security Data Augmentation for Analyst Training and Security Dashboard Validation

BEST PRESENTATION AWARD: Rohan Viswanathan (Texas A&M University), Malware Classification Through Subgraphs and Machine Learning

BEST PRESENTATION AWARD: Maximillian Tiberghien, Nicolas Harpey, Zachary Schellinger and William Johnson (The Citadel), Collective Remote Attestation with a Focus on Industrial Internet of Things

Additional details for the conference can be found at this link.