Georgia Tech | The Contracting Education Academy

January 2, 2014 By AMK

Georgia Tech expands cyber security educational offerings into certificate program

Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE), in cooperation with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), now offers a Cyber Security Certificate that offers participants a more in-depth approach, including a focus on policy-making, people issues and engineering frameworks for cyber security.

The five-course certificate is composed of one required course and four electives, and applies systems engineering principles to create a holistic approach to cyber security. Choosing from seven courses, participants can customize their certificate to give a unique focus to particular topics.

According to Terrye Schaetzel, director of Educational Outreach with GTRI, this course will help organizations move their cyber security efforts from a reactive approach to a predictive model.

“Cyber Security is not just an information technology (IT) function,” said Schaetzel, who works with GTRI’s Cyber Technology and Information Security Laboratory (CTISL). “It is becoming a core strategic function of any organization. This certificate and courses enable people to take a broader look at the whole picture of cyber security.”

Designed for technical professionals who lead cyber security efforts and aspire to be CISO’s (Chief Information Security Officers), the courses also enable participants to further develop critical thinking skills. Hands-on labs and exercises provide a deeper understanding of solutions to help counter increasing threats to cyber security.

Each course takes roughly three to four days, which allows for a relatively quick turnaround for the certificate. All requirements for the certificate must be completed within six years from the date of completion of the first course.

For more information, please visit: www.pe.gatech.edu/cybersecurity

November 11, 2013 By AMK

Georgia Tech warns of threats to cloud data storage and mobile devices in report of ‘emerging cyber threats’

As more businesses find their way into the cloud, few engage in security measures beyond those provided by the associated cloud storage firm, a new report from Georgia Tech notes. Even fewer seek heightened data protection because of concerns that usability and access to remote data would be significantly reduced.

These concerns are among findings made by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in today’s release of the Georgia Tech Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2014. The report was released at the annual Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit, a gathering of industry and academic leaders who have distinguished themselves in the field of cyber security.
“With recent revelations of data collection by the federal government, we will continue to see a focus on cloud security,” said Wenke Lee, director of GTISC. “But encryption in the cloud often impacts data accessibility and processing speed. So we are likely to see increased debate about the tradeoffs between security, functionality and efficiency.”

Encryption challenges were a focus at this year’s summit, which featured some of the nation’s top information security experts. These included keynote speaker Martin Hellman, professor emeritus at Stanford University and one of the inventors of public key cryptography, a way of securing communications without relying on pre-shared secrets.

In related findings, the report reveals security issues involving the “Internet of Things,” referring to the notion that the increase of Internet-capable devices could create opportunities remote hacking and data leakage. With everything from home automation to smartphones and other personal devices becoming connected to the Internet, these devices will capture more real-world information and could permit outside parties, companies, and governments to misuse that information.

In the mobile space, even though designers of mobile devices and tablets have developed a robust ecosystem to prevent large-scale device compromises, the report finds that the threat of malicious and potentially targeted use remains. Earlier this year, researchers at Georgia Tech reported that they found ways to bypass the vetting process of Apple’s App Store and subsequently showed how malicious USB chargers can be used to infect Apple iOS devices.

“No matter how successful we have been, black hat operatives will continue to attack infrastructure at every angle possible, making cyber security a global issue for years to come,” said Bo Rotoloni, director of GTRI’s Cyber Technology and Information Security Laboratory (CTISL). “We must remain vigilant. The purpose of this Summit and Report is to raise awareness, create educational opportunities and maintain an ongoing dialogue among industry, academia and government.”

The Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit is a forum for the IT security ecosystem to gather together, discuss and debate the evolving nature of cyber threats, and to chart the course for creating collaborative solutions.

In addition to Hellman’s keynote address, the 2013 Summit included a panel of security experts from Microsoft, Splunk, Dell Secureworks, Solera Networks and Georgia Tech.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation’s leading public research universities and the home of cyber security research and education initiatives through GTISC, GTRI and other facilities across campus. These efforts focus on producing technology and innovations that help drive economic growth and improve daily life on a global scale.

The report is available for download at gtsecuritysummit.com.

November 10, 2013 By AMK

Business counselors receive Academy’s instruction on managing a government contract successfully

How unusual is it for a business to put more time into winning a government contract than planning to manage one?

The answer to this question — unfortunately — is that, all too often, contractors give little thought to planning for contract performance. Because of this, some contractors run into contract performance problems and end up damaging relationships with government agencies as well as spoiling their chance to win follow-on contract work.

To address this problem, The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech (The Academy) designed a four-hour workshop entitled, “Establishing Partnerships with the Government.” The workshop was presented for the first time on November 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.

More than 125 counselors from procurement technical assistance centers (PTACs) across the country attended this training. The workshop was held in conjunction with the fall training conference of the Association of Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (APTAC).

PTACs are funded, in part, by the Defense Logistics Agency to provide counseling and assistance to businesses seeking to compete successfully in federal, state and local government contracting. Ninety-eight PTACs — with over 300 local offices — form a nationwide network of dedicated procurement professionals working to help local businesses in the government marketplace.

The Academy’s workshop instruction was complemented by a 121-page manual produced by The Academy exclusively for APTAC members as well as a special web page where contract administration and training resources are available for download.

Student Guide — Workshop participants received a detailed manual, access to a website, and other resources developed exclusively by The Academy.

The Academy has conducted training for APTAC before. “We were honored to once again conduct training for the elite corps of PTAC counselors who advise businesses about government contracting,” stated Donna Bertrand, The Academy’s program manager. “PTAC counselors provide vital assistance to businesses, especially small businesses, nationwide.”

In designing the workshop and the printed manual, the Academy’s curriculum development team analyzed the entire federal contract post-award process and selected those elements most critical to the success of businesses engaging in government contract work. The Academy’s team then developed the training workshop and materials designed to assist PTAC counselors in their work with those businesses.

Of special value to the trainees is a special pocket guide distributed during the workshop. Entitled “30 Tips for Successful Completion of a Government Contract,” the pocket guide consists of 30 one-page tips that they can pass along to their clients.

The Academy’s instructor, Kathy Cames, was pleased to share her knowledge of the government contracting process with the PTAC counselors. “My goal,” she said, “was to provide insights and practical experience to PTAC counselors so they can provide good advice to their clients in advance of winning a government contract. After all, it can be too late to plan after winning a contract.”

125 PTAC counselors received expert instruction from The Academy's senior instructor Kathy Cames. — 125 PTAC counselors from across the country gathered in Washington, DC to receive expert instruction from The Academy’s senior instructor Kathy Cames.

In all, The Academy presented 13 specific “PTAC Tools” during the workshop — each designed to educate PTAC counselors about a specific aspect of the FAR that is especially important to PTAC clients.

At the conclusion of the workshop, each attendee was presented with a certificate of completion and was awarded 0.3 CEUs from Georgia Tech.

Click on the image below to see the table of contents of the printed Guide which served as the outline for The Academy’s workshop:

November 4, 2013 By AMK

Georgia Tech researchers evaluate electronic flight bags for Air National Guard

When pilots encounter an in-flight emergency – such as engine or hydraulic failure – they consult with manuals, emergency procedures and other reference materials contained in their flight bags for information on how to respond. In the future, these cumbersome flight bags could be replaced by “electronic flight bags” consisting of a lightweight tablet computer loaded with electronic versions of documents that today are printed on paper. A tablet computer could easily store an entire library of aeronautical publications and charts and also include the most up-to-date versions.

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are currently assessing the usability of electronic flight bags by Air National Guard pilots. Electronic flight bags could improve safety, operational effectiveness and efficiency for crew members, plus save paper and printing costs. The Federal Aviation Administration has already approved in-flight use of Apple iPads as electronic flight bags by commercial pilots.

“The Air National Guard asked us to conduct an operational utility evaluation of various tablet computers to determine whether they were feasible as electronic flight bags and whether standardized hardware and software platforms could be selected for use by all of their squadrons,” said Byron Coker, a GTRI principal research engineer who is leading the project.

This work is supported by the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center in Tucson, Ariz. Coker’s collaborators on this project include research engineer Thomas Glimmerveen and student Joshua Fordham, who are based in GTRI’s Warner Robins, Ga. Field Office, and research engineer Thomas Norris, who is based in GTRI’s Tucson, Ariz. Field Office.

“Air Combat Command requested that we execute an operational test of the electronic flight bag due to some critical paper flight products that will no longer be printed in 2015,” said Lt. Col. Rogelio Maldonado of the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center. “The electronic flight bag has shown great promise and is likely to revolutionize cockpit management by consolidating flight products and providing the means for quickly navigating all resources.”

With GTRI’s assistance, pilots of A-10 and F-16 aircraft have executed flight simulator missions to test and evaluate two commercially-available tablets loaded with a software app developed by GTRI researchers called “QuickTOs” and commercially available flight planning apps. The flight simulator missions include emergencies, such as a cockpit fire or engine failure, which require the pilot to refer to the “QuickTOs” app that that enables quick access to technical orders.

“Technical orders can contain several hundred pages of safety procedures, technical information and instructions pertaining to the aircraft that need to be flipped through quickly in an emergency to find the relevant information and checklists,” explained Coker. “We electronically formatted the publications for our app and added links so that the documents could be easily and quickly organized, navigated and read on a tablet.”

The flight simulator missions also include executing landing approaches in simulated weather conditions that require the pilot to use instrument approach procedure charts. These charts are frequently updated due to the constantly changing environment around airports and must be reprinted and distributed to pilots each time a new version becomes available. Using electronic approach charts could greatly reduce paper and printing costs and increase the ease and speed of obtaining up-to-date charts. To date, more than a half-dozen multi-hour flight simulator missions have been conducted, each with several emergency procedures performed.

Before the flight simulator tests began, the GTRI researchers conducted a market survey of tablets that could be used as electronic flight bags. They evaluated 24 touch-screen devices commercially available based on the following criteria: battery life, weight, ruggedness, night-vision goggle compatibility, glove compatibility, performance, physical size, screen size and software compatibility. They evaluated devices that operated on Android, Apple iOS and Hewlett-Packard operating systems.

Air National Guard pilots then evaluated the tablets that scored highest against the criteria and judged each device’s ease-of-use and functionality as an electronic flight bag. The pilots judged whether each device functioned better, the same or less well than the standard paper publications and whether each device would support the basic requirements for flight and possibly even provide information not previously available.

As a result of the evaluations, two tablet computers were selected for flight simulator testing. Future work on this project will include additional flight simulations, followed by electromagnetic interference tests and real flight testing of the devices.

“Once we get the necessary approvals to begin flight tests, we will conduct them for about a year to gather enough data so that we can provide our recommendation for how the Air National Guard should move forward with fielding electronic flight bags,” said Coker.

Based on the initial simulator missions, Coker believes the electronic flight bag could be integrated as part of the pilot’s kneeboard – a clipboard strapped to the pilot’s knee that keeps flight-pertinent information, such as charts, maps and approach plates, close at hand during flight.

September 30, 2013 By AMK

NIST awards pilot grant to Georgia Tech Research Institute for ‘Trustmark Marketplace’

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a pilot grant to the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in support of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).

NSTIC is a White House initiative to work collaboratively with the private sector, advocacy groups and public-sector agencies to catalyze an “Identity Ecosystem” in which technologies, policies and consensus-based standards support greater choice, trust, security and privacy when individuals, businesses and other organizations conduct sensitive transactions online.

Under the grant, GTRI will develop and demonstrate a trustmark framework that facilitates cost-effective scaling of interoperable trust across multiple Communities of Interest (COIs) within the Identity Ecosystem and enhances privacy through transparency and third-party validation. A trustmark is a rigorously defined, machine-readable statement of compliance with a specific set of technical or business/policy rules.

Trustmarks have the potential to enable wide-scale trust and interoperability within the Identity Ecosystem by helping to foster transparency and widespread operational convergence on the specific requirements for each dimension of interoperability, including communication protocols and profiles, cryptographic algorithms, business-level user attributes for access control and audit purposes, and various levels of policy such as privacy policies and practices.

Trustmarks can also reduce the complexity of the Identity Ecosystem’s trust landscape, and turn what would otherwise be a collection of poorly interconnected “federated identity siloes” into a more cohesive trust environment. In addition, trustmarks can enhance privacy within the Identity Ecosystem by helping COIs define clear, concise and rigorous privacy rules that participating agencies must follow.

The pilot project will leverage GTRI’s experience with the Federal Identity, Credentialing, and Access Management (FICAM), State Identity, Credentialing, and Access Management (SICAM), and Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management (GFIPM) standards.

It will also build upon the National Identity Exchange Federation (NIEF) (https://nief.gfipm.net/), an operational identity federation that GTRI has developed and manages on behalf of the U.S. Justice and Law Enforcement community. In implementing the pilot, GTRI plans to partner with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), and one or more current NIEF member agencies, such as Los Angeles County and the Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS).

“The NSTIC Identity Ecosystem vision is huge and can provide significant improvements in online security and trusted commerce. The challenge is to effectively engage and balance the large number of stakeholders and requirements within a scalable and agile Identity Ecosystem Framework that can thrive,” said John Wandelt, chief of the Information and Enterprise Architecture Division within GTRI’s Information and Communications Laboratory.

“GTRI and its partners are honored and excited about the opportunity to be a part of NIST’s important work and help provide solutions through NSTIC,” said Wandelt, who also serves as executive director of the National Identity Exchange Federation (NIEF).

The Georgia Tech Research Institute solves complex problems through innovative and customer focused research and education. Established in 1934, GTRI is Georgia Tech’s non-profit applied research arm with more than 1,700 staff, 17 locations, eight laboratories and annual contract awards exceeding $300 million. For more information, visit www.gtri.gatech.edu.

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