DEVCOM-Army Research Lab Collaboration for “Improving Technologically Savvy (T-SAVVY) Soldiers’ Cybersecurity Skills and Competencies Through Human Guided Generative AI”

 

Yair Levy Ph.D., Professor of Information Systems and Cybersecurity at the NSU College of Computing and Engineering, is collaborating with Catherine Neubauer, Ph.D., Research Psychologist and Lead for the Technologically Savvy Soldier Program at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command-Army Research Lab (DEVCOM-ARL), on a cooperative agreement, cybersecurity project.

Below is an interview with Dr. Levy about their project, titled “Improving Technologically Savvy (T-SAVVY) Soldiers’ Cybersecurity Skills and Competencies Through Human Guided Generative AI”.

 

What is your official position/title at NSU? Are you affiliated with any other institutes, clinics, etc.?

I have been at NSU for 21 years, and first and foremost, I’m a Professor at the College of Computing and Engineering. I am very proud to have graduated 62 Ph.D. students since joining NSU. A majority of those are cybersecurity Ph.D.s working around the nation in academia, government, and industry. I am also the Director of the Center for Information Protection, Education, and Research (CIPhER) (https://infosec.nova.edu/). CIPhER is NSU’s National Security Agency (NSA) designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) – Cyber Defense (CD) and Cyber Research (R) that provides the opportunity for faculty and students from NSU and institutions throughout South Florida, as well as industry and government partners, to develop innovative solutions to solve critical cybersecurity problems and educate those who will serve as the next generation of researchers, academics, and industry/government leaders. In this capacity, I serve as the point-of-contact at NSU for the NSA. Interestingly, many of my former Ph.D. students, referenced above, serve as the point-of-contact for the NSA at their respective institutions around the nation.

 

Tell me briefly about your recent grant-funded project(s).

The project, titled “Improving Technologically Savvy (T-SAVVY) Soldiers’ Cybersecurity Skills and Competencies Through Human Guided Generative AI”, is actually a cooperative agreement (CA) between NSU and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command-Army Research Lab (DEVCOM-ARL). Therefore, I work closely with Dr. Neubauer to adapt the project objectives and goals as the study progresses. This is non-classified work looking to identify and enhance the skills and competencies in Soldiers to become “tech savvy” in cybersecurity domains. Basically, we are trying to map which individuals have the best capabilities to be a tech savvy cyber warrior, who will be augmented with generative AI (GenAI) support, with the least amount of training needed.

In this project, we identified freshman students, including those who belonged to the ROTC program at NSU, with very little cybersecurity education. Those students are put into a virtual environment, called Cyber Range, to see how they would respond during live cybersecurity scenarios. It is important to note that this is not a simulation; the Cyber Range is a very sophisticated, contained environment, with physical servers powering virtual machines, to allow experimentation with live cybersecurity scenarios, without negatively impacting the user’s hardware and software. Prior to entering the Cyber Range, the students complete a self-assessment of their cybersecurity knowledge and skills (competencies) followed by an in-lab experiment to test their true cybersecurity competencies in the Cyber Range. Two weeks following their initial experience in the Cyber Range, the students participated in training on creating effective AI prompts for cybersecurity and they were invited to repeat the experiment within the Cyber Range where the range provides us the post assessment on their cybersecurity competencies. The results from the Cyber Range are very granular, which allows us to assess and measure very specific knowledge, skills, and task performances (competencies); those of which are linked to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Workforce Framework. The framework allows us to align with specific sets of knowledge, predetermine knowledge, skills, and tasks (KSTs) that are associated with specific work roles. All the KSTs listed within the framework are actually measured by the Cyber Range platform when the students perform live activities.

As the students perform, the Cyber Range platform assesses their knowledge by knowing if they clicked the right places, if they are looking for the right information in the right place, and if they performed the tasks at the skill levels needed to mitigate the scenario’s attack. By measuring the knowledge, skills, and tasks, we are assessing their competencies within the Cyber Range platform. And what we know so far from the research’s initial results is that the students with GenAI on their side had significant improvements in their cybersecurity competencies than without it. These results help link human capabilities with GenAI, creating Gen AI teams and tech savvy soldiers.

 

Who is working with you on this project (Internally and externally)?

The co-investigator on this cooperative project is Dr. Catherine Neubauer, who is a Research Psychologist and the lead for the Technologically Savvy Soldier Program at DEVCOM-ARL.

Internally, Dr. Greg Simco and Dr. Laurie Dringus are assisting me from our college. Shaw Marcus from Academic Affairs has been helping us coordinate events, and distribute participant gift cards. He’s really a wonderful resource, by the way. I also have a Ph.D. student, Dariusz Witko, whose dissertation project intersects with this work.

Also, we have an external consultant, Dr. Melissa Carlton, who is an alumnus of our Ph.D. in cybersecurity management program at the College of Computing and Engineering at NSU. She is one of my former Ph.D. students and she’s an expert on cybersecurity skills and skills assessment, so her expertise is critical for our success.

 

What opportunities and/or benefits does this grant bring to the NSU community?

Obviously, the students. First and foremost, the Ph.D. student working on the project is conducting meaningful research and is becoming a trained researcher. Undergraduate and graduate assistant students working on the project have the potential to spin off other ideas to work on. Those experiences also are producing publications, with the opportunity for the students to be first author or a co-author. Then, there is the greater group of students that we invited to participate, who are compensated with an Amazon gift card that they get for participating. We also must emphasize that the benefits are also for first and foremost for U.S. DoD and DEVCOM-ARL in particular in helping us understand what makes technologically savvy (T-SAVVY) soldiers’ cybersecurity capabilities that are needed to protect our nation.

 

How has NSU helped you pursue and/or achieve personal and professional goals you have set for yourself?

My Dean, Dr. Meline Kevorkian, and Associate Dean and Department Chair, Dr. Greg Simco, have helped me tremendously. They have supported and given approval to pursue certain funding opportunities and allowed me to dedicate time to work on these exciting research pursuits. Everything from ensuring facilities to soliciting participants for projects requires resources from our college and I’m very thankful for Dean Kevorkian and Associate Dean Simco for their support. Other than that, the wrap around support at NSU including Cathy Harlan and my grant officer, Estibalitz Igartua, in the Office of Sponsored Programs and Mirian Otero and Deon Pottinger in Finance is a massive blessing. Some of my colleagues from other institutions do not have a grant support office that we have and are facing many challenges.

 

What advice do you have for other grant seekers at NSU?

I can tell other grant seekers to get to know the agencies that you wish to apply to. Get to know who the people are and what type of problems they have. Over the years I got to know the higher ups at NSA, where they will present a non-classified problem set and explain their challenges. Coming up with ideas to address their problems is already half of a grant proposal, I would say, right? Always pursue things that are win-win, it must be good for the agency and good for USU, that is my motto.

 

What is the next grant proposal or project on your agenda?

This year, we received additional funding for Year 2 of this project; therefore, we will be concentrating on Year 2 efforts and continuing to collect data. In addition to that, we are continuing to work on establishing higher level commitments between DEVCOM-ARL and NSU to tackle higher level research issues.