Cyber crime and cybersecurity areas where all organizations need immediate assistance. The CGA has developed relationships with several institutions to offer students an opportunity to showcase their analytic skills and solve problems of immediate importance in the field of cyber policy and strategy. Cyber practicums are a key element in our commitment to bridging classroom learning with practical applications, and serve as an alternative final requirement to the masters thesis in the MSGSCC program.
MSGSCC Consulting Practicums
Giving students applied learning opportunities with real-world partners.
Practicum Partner: New York City Cyber Command
Students provide hands-on research and consultation on a topic of critical importance to New York City Cyber Command (NYC3). NYC Cyber Command is a centralized organization created by NYC Executive Order to lead the City's cyber defense efforts, working across more than 100 agencies and offices to prevent, detect, respond, and recover from cyber threats. NYC Cyber Command is committed to protecting NYC infrastructure and critical systems from malicious attacks through the use of the latest technologies, public-private partnerships, and regular training and exercises for City employees.
Deliverables: Executive level recommendations for policies and procedures as well as action plans for how NYC3 can best provide cybersecurity services to the City of New York.
Practicum Partner: Department of Defense, Hacking for Defense
Description of Projects: unique and forward-thinking educational model engages teams of university students to solve some of the nation’s toughest national security and defense problems using Lean LaunchPad® principles. H4D is offered at premier private institutions of higher education, large public universities, and small public and private universities at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
H4D pushes students beyond their comfort zones and stretches them intellectually and practically as they navigate the difficulties that naturally arise from working in multidisciplinary teams into an unfamiliar (to many) field at a faster tempo than what is common in most university classes.
Government problem sponsors value the course for the perspective and ingenuity the students bring in responding to problems, often finding that input from the student teams allows them to arrive at a not-yet-thought-of solution.
More information can be found at the Hacking for Defense Website: https://www.h4d.us
Practicum Partner: Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) of the United Nations
For the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate CTED) of the United Nations, CGA has collaborated on 16 projects over the last 8 years, on a range of terrorism and counter terrorism topics. They include ISIS use of social media to recruit and incite; how UN member states deal with terrorist fighters returning from Iraq and Syria; how the UN can work with the private sector and academic institutions to track emerging terrorist threats; the role of technology in countering terrorist threats; and currently, the rise of right-wing terrorism and member state responses.
Deliverables are shaped by our UN client needs. We have written papers, held workshops and conferences, delivered briefings, and built processes for collaborating with non-UN experts, firms and state political actors. These deliverables have shaped UN Security Council resolutions, made their way into CTED briefings for member states and other UN bodies, and helped CTED keep abreast of emerging trends and disseminate these trend reports to their global network of experts.
Practicum Partner: United States State Department, Global Engagement Center
Project: Countering State and Non-State Actor Propaganda and Disinformation
Projects center on the Global Engagement Center’s mission of exposing and countering state and non-state actor propaganda and disinformation that “undermines or influences the policies, security, or stability of the US and its allies and partner nations.” Previous projects have focused on identifying the nexus between state and non-state actor disinformation as it pertains to the rise of racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, investigating what vulnerabilities make individuals and entire societies more susceptible to disinformation, responding to Islamist and far-right violent extremism in the Western Balkans, and countering radicalization and recruitment into terrorism in Somalia and Nigeria.
Deliverables are determined in close consultation with the client and have included infographics and reports that are disseminated across US government agencies and to US embassies and partners abroad to inform policy and practice. Participants also have the opportunity to share their findings with an inter-agency audience in Washington DC.