By Camas Frank
A public-private partnership that started a little over a year ago with the appointment of Bill Britton, as visiting director of Cal Poly’s Cybersecurity Center, is moving into new ground with the opening of a new facility on the California National Guard base at Camp San Luis.
Britton is on loan from the Parsons Corporation, “One of the world’s largest engineering and construction organizations specializing in infrastructure, transportation, planning…” where he’s vice president for Cyber Strategy.
When he arrived last year, Britton told members of the local industry group Softec during a recent presentation, “The program was pretty anemic.”
It has been growing under his guidance however, with support from the likes of Raytheon, Boeing, Pacific Gas & Electric and McAffee Corp., and of course, Parsons Corp.
The curriculum has even outgrown the bounds of campus now with the concept of the cyber training center constructed with help from the National Guard, who has an interest in protecting the State not only from the white-collar variety of cybercrime that the public may be familiar with, but from coordinated attacks of other kinds.
Of course they’re not starting off by throwing Cal Poly students into international conflicts. The first focus of the center will be on law enforcement working with students and the test run, starting Nov. 16 with the funding on hand, is a digital forensics class for local law enforcement.
Specifically, law enforcement agencies are getting the first class as a “proof of concept” for State Legislators to see when proposals come up for the next funding cycle.
As it turns out, there are very few places in the country for training on digital forensic evidence. Which is not just what to do behind a keyboard, but what to do with a suspect’s cell phone out in the field.
How to preserve chain of custody and protect devices from interference are some of the simpler-to-understand concepts.
Britton formed relationships with local forensic examiners and discovered that for the type of training that’s needed, a facility in Alabama and the FBI at Quantico, Va., were available to train officers and forensic examiners.
“Law enforcement needs industry help understanding the technology,” he said. “But the whole state gets only $400,000 to train officers right now.”
After putting together the “Central Coast Cyber Crimes Working Group,” the folks at Cal Poly started writing grants to bring that kind of training to SLO and coincidentally, to ensure that the University remains a major player.
