Hailu Xu
California State University-Long Beach, CA·Computer Science
Defending computer networks increasingly means working with data. Analysts must collect logs and network traffic, clean them, link records from different sources, store them and analyze them before they can judge whether an attack is underway.
- Fields
Computer Science
Education Research
- Topics
cybersecurity education
data science
network data analysis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Develop hands-on virtual exercises that teach students to collect, clean, correlate, store and analyze real system and network data in order to make informed cybersecurity decisions.
- Create individual assignments at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels that support self-learning and self-assessment, plus group assignments on realistic large-scale security tasks that build teamwork and communication.
- Host and publicly release all materials on the NSF-funded SPHERE research infrastructure so teachers and students can use the platform itself to manage and analyze cybersecurity data.
More about the research
Yet many students entering the field never practice these steps on realistic data, and the workforce gap is large: the shortage of cybersecurity professionals was estimated at 5.5 million in 2023. This collaborative project builds hands-on, virtual teaching materials that combine data science with cybersecurity, so students learn to make informed security decisions from real system and network data.
Why it matters
A shortage of cybersecurity professionals estimated at 5.5 million leaves organizations exposed. Freely available, hands-on exercises hosted on shared research infrastructure could let many schools and colleges strengthen their security curricula without building their own labs, and prepare graduates to analyze real network and system data collaboratively and at scale.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jelena Mirkovic
University of Southern California, CA·Computer Science
Build SPHERE, a shared research infrastructure with diverse hardware, configurable networks and safe network policies, for reproducible cybersecurity and privacy experiments on IoT, edge computing and programmable networks.
Zhengping Luo
Rider University, NJ·Education Research
Design flexible teaching modules, including labs, tutorials, assignments and research activities, on AI security and privacy in computer vision, speech and audio, and network systems, for integration into undergraduate computing courses.
Sheikh Rabiul Islam
University at Albany, NY·Computer Science
Develop seven AI4SecureCI learning modules that teach fair and explainable AI for securing cloud cyberinfrastructure, covering topics from malware detection to adversarial attacks, and integrate them into undergraduate and graduate courses.
The school
California State University-Long Beach: 3 labs on PI Pages, $34M a year on research, 24 research doctorates a year.
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