For Immediate Release
Jan. 5, 2010
Contact: Daphne Larkin
NEWS RELEASE
Norwich University to Collaborate with Cybersecurity Startup
NORTHFIELD, Vt. (Jan. 5, 2010) – Norwich University officials announced today a program of collaboration with Adaptive Cyber Security Instruments, Inc. (ACSI) to provide real-world educational opportunities for NU students and resources to develop and test ACSI’s cyber situational awareness products.
NU also intends to create new courses in the emerging field of cyber conflict, information warfare and information operations. ACSI’s products were conceived to meet the challenges of this field including cyber intelligence, and the theory behind them will form the core of this curriculum.
ACSI hopes to benefit by exposing students, including possibly active-duty and reserve military officers, to their products and conceptual framework, which are being developed with government and military applications as primary markets.
ACSI was started in 2005 to develop technologies that can successfully contain and thwart attacks on Windows computers and vital IT networks, both in enterprise and in government, by providing real-time attack data.
As participants in the company’s evolution from a startup through funding and delivery of commercial products, NU students will have access to ACSI’s corporate documents and opportunities for long-term entrepreneurship case studies in courses such as finance, market research, business ethics, statistics and law, management of information assurance, operations and organizational management. Students will be encouraged to focus on various aspects of ACSI’s business such as market surveys and focus groups, creating reports that have academic value to the students and practical value to ACSI.
The use of ACSI’s state-of-the-art software will provide opportunities for hands-on information assurance technology courses such as programming, GUI design, management of information systems, database and network management, and software engineering. Students will benefit from contact with state-of-the-art software and ACSI will benefit by familiarizing dozens of students each school year with their products as the students enter the job market.
"The agreement with ACSI is another step in the growing integration of Norwich University's department of computing and the information assurance faculty with the outstanding work done by Dr. Peter R. Stephenson, director of the Norwich University Advanced Computing Center,” said M.E. Kabay, associate professor of information assurance, Norwich University, and chief technical officer, ACSI. “Together we can bring our students into contact with leading edge firms and technology, benefiting the students, the firms and the university as well as contributing to the improvement of global information assurance technology."
NU students and ACSI will also benefit from real-world experience in vulnerability testing and quality assurance of ACSI’s commercial software. Students will be trained in the latest testing tools and methods either on work-study contracts funded by ACSI or as part of individual study research courses, and have the opportunity to work on production code, gaining valuable insights while providing input that improves the functionality and stability of commercial software products.
The project seeks to provide a wealth of real-world, hands-on educational opportunities for NU students who will be among the first to work with and gain an understanding of ACSI’s innovative software and technology, and to provide resources and bright young minds to assist the process of bringing ACSI’s products to the marketplace.
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Norwich University is a diversified academic institution that educates traditional-age students and adults in a Corps of Cadets and as civilians. Norwich offers a broad selection of traditional and distance-learning programs culminating in Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees. Founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge of the U.S. Army, Norwich University is the oldest private military college in the United States of America and the birthplace of our nation's Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
ACSI < acsi-cybersa.com > was started in 2005 to develop technologies that can successfully contain and thwart attacks on vital IT networks, both in enterprise and in government, by providing real-time attack data.
Release Date: Jan. 5, 2010
M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, CTO ACSI & Associate Professor of Information Assurance, School of Business & Management, Norwich University mkabay@norwich.edu
